


The Order

by shulamithbond



Series: The Bane Chronicles [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: New Republic Era - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Autism, Bullying, Coming of Age, Disabled Character, Disabled Character of Color, F/F, F/M, Fantasy, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Gothic, Horror, Lovecraftian, Politics, Queer Themes, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Trauma, well sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 02:23:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 40
Words: 79,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/657017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shulamithbond/pseuds/shulamithbond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retelling of the Emperor reborn storyline that deviates heavily from canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. (Part I) Bane

            The New Sith Order, formerly the New Sith Guild, crowded into the Kimorra tavern right before the midnight rush. The place wasn’t empty, but it was quiet still- only a few of the low, round tables were occupied, and the bar was clear. The tavern was a smaller place, with wide blue-glassed picture windows and dimmed violet fluorescent lamps, plus the notes of some good classic soft-shred music wafting through the air like perfume. Ordinarily, the whole Order wouldn’t have fit in one pub, but the senior masters had left behind the apprentices the order had already gained since winning New Republic approval. Their makeshift headquarters, laughably called the New Sith Temple, were situated in Coruscant’s Crimson Corridor neighborhood for budget reasons, and someone had to be left in the building at all times to guard against the ranats and potential squatters. And after all, as Darth Apathian stated, summing up a fundamental truth of the master-learner relationship, “That’s what apprentices are for.”

        Darth Bane, formerly Her Imperial Grace, the Princess Mara-Jade, and before that Mearegeode Tharsdottir of Tatooine, exhaled in relief as she sat down at the bar. Everyone needed this- after the journey from Tatooine, the struggle to win senatorial approval, and the search for a halfway-suitable base of operations, everyone had been under a lot of stress, and people had practically been whipping out their lightsabers over such differences as who got the last beer. It would’ve only been a matter of time before someone lost an arm, or worse. She was also glad they seemed to like the cantina she had chosen. Most of them would have preferred somewhere larger, more drug-filled, and more expensive, but Bane had exercised her executive power and brought everyone here. She’d seen this place when she was finalizing the real estate deal on the Temple, and even talked with the woman, Niama Viviani, who co-owned and ran it with her husband, Ardan Teta. Niama was a good woman who, as a recovered death stick addict, took pains to run a clean, relatively honest pub. Bane hadn’t met Ardan yet, but aside from a rather shady past, he was a prince, according to Niama. Bane also enjoyed the literary reference of the cantina’s name, which probably escaped most of the clientele, including her Sith.

       Speaking of her Sith, a few were attempting to stare at her surreptitiously, Bane noticed. This would be the first time they had seen her in a dress, she realized- a proper dress, not one of the ankle-length kirbli-weave skirts her mother had sewn her the last time she had visited the Tribe. This dress was bought secondhand, and the style was about twenty years out of date, but it was a real dress- it was red with black trim, sleeveless, with a liberal neckline and a ruffled skirt that did not cover her knees. Most importantly, it fit Bane’s body. That was unusual. Bane was a big woman- ‘fat’ didn’t tell the whole story, because although Bane was no supermodel, she did carry several pounds of muscle where her limbs were concerned, and there was also the fact that she was closer to two meters tall than some of her men, and broad-shouldered besides. Tusken genetics and the eating habits of the New Sith had combined to give her a body that was incredibly difficult to dress. That wasn’t even taking into account her cropped red curls, which clashed with almost all colors besides black.

       She waved at Niama, who sidled over. Niama was a handsome woman, still fairly young, but with a look of weariness about her. “What can I get you, ma’am?”

       “Can you do a White Bantha?” Bane inquired. The drink was a Tatooine favorite, but in the Core, it tended to be harder to find.

      “Sure. Coming right up.” Niama set to work. A cloud of apprehension floated around her like an odor. Bane saw the barista shoot her sidelong glances, looking as though she definitely had something on her mind.

      “There something you want to ask me, Niama?” she said at last.

     Niama set the drink down. Like all good White Banthas, it was served in a pint glass. White Banthas were developed by the Tusken originally, just as it had been the Tusken who were the original distillers of the dry, strong kirbli-seed whiskey that was used to make them. White Banthas were equal parts whiskey and bantha milk or yogurt, mixed with kirbli-flower honey, a few spices, and pieces of dried fruit if you could get them. They were known for being extremely potent, and for allegedly having some actual nutritional content. They had originally been invented, Bane had always heard, as a provision for the warpath, because they could be consumed and carried more easily than solid food. A lot of Tusken cooking utilized alcohol; Bane had heard that once you knew this about the Tusken, they instantly became much more understandable as a culture.

      “Um, yes, actually.” Niama looked at her. “Wait- you know my name.”

      “I was in here before. You probably don’t remember.”

      “I remember your face. Look…are you that woman who runs that offshoot of the Sith Lords?”

      “That’s me. Darth Bane.” Bane shook Niama’s hand, reaching out through the Force. “You…have someone you want me to test for Force-sensitivity?”

      “Did you just read my mind?”

      “Educated guess. Want me to do it now?”

      “Can you?”

      “I’ve taken to carrying one of the pocket kits. You wouldn’t believe how many people want to test their kids, now that the Empire’s not claiming Force-sensitives anymore.” Bane slid off her stool and followed Niama behind the bar, into the back room, and up a flight of stairs. The doorway they passed through opened up to the small but neat main room of an apartment. Most of the space was a sitting room, with a small kitchen and one large table in a corner. Three doors in the wall presumably led to the bedrooms and refresher. At the center of the room, on a clean but sagging couch, a girl of about fifteen sat, partly covered by a blanket, watching some HoloNet program listlessly on a screen with old, fading plasma. By the dim bluish glow, Bane observed her. She was short, solidly built, probably even chunky. She was gifted with her mother's olive skin and a graceful, round face, light blue eyes, and shoulder-length dark hair that would probably be beautiful if it had been washed recently. At this moment, there was a redness around her eyes, and Bane could see tear streaks drying on her cheeks. She turned to peer at Bane and her mother guardedly. In her face was written the question: _What does the universe want with me now?_

      “Gaya, this is Darth Bane,” introduced Niama softly. “Darth Bane, this is my daughter, Gaya.”

      “Nice to meet you, Gaya.” Darth Bane smiled as nicely as she could. Adolescence and secondary school were not kind to girls like Gaya; she knew that firsthand.

     “Nice to meet you, too.” Gaya still looked suspicious.

     “Gaya, Darth Bane is going to test your midi-chlorian levels,” Niama explained.

     Gaya frowned. “But…Mom, we just…” She looked confused, then conflicted, and then seemed to come to a decision. “Look, Miss…Darth Bane, I, um, I appreciate you coming up here and doing this, but, look, I just went to the New Jedi Order’s headquarters last week with Mom, and they tested me, and I don’t have them. Midi-chlorians. Not enough, anyway; I’m not sure, that wasn’t clear. But I’m not Force-sensitive. I don’t know why Mom brought you here. I’m sorry.” She did not meet Bane’s eyes.

       Bane turned to Niama. She hadn’t known the woman long, but it still seemed so out of character for Niama to be so in denial. “Is that true?”

      Niama shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking. A week ago, I was willing to accept that Gaya wasn’t Force-sensitive. But…things have changed. My husband and I have…evidence that the test must have been wrong.”

       “What kind of evidence?” asked Bane. She felt deeply as though she’d rather be anywhere but here; if Niama was determined that her daughter was Force-sensitive when she wasn’t, an ugly scene was coming.

      “Convincing evidence,” said a soft voice from behind Bane, who turned as a wave rippled through the dark side.


	2. Ardan

            The man was not especially tall or broad-shouldered, and his features- neatly combed pale red hair; thin, pale lips; and ice-blue eyes- while not especially ugly, were not intimidating or, to be honest, overwhelmingly attractive either. Were it not for the worn-looking jacket over the workman’s canvas unisuit, the man probably would have struck A. Kirlan, hall monitor at the public secondary school PS 1088 of Coruscant, as some kind of government bureaucrat, possibly an inspector or census-taker of some kind.

      Kirlan looked up just in time to see the man striding past the monitor’s desk. “Sir, hold on there a minute.”

     The man pivoted and stormed back, leaning across the desk. “What?” he snapped. A parent, Kirlan decided. Definitely a parent.

      “You gotta sign the visitor’s log, sir,” he said calmly. “Got to have a visitor’s pass to go beyond this desk. For the kids’ safety.”

      “I am the stepfather of one of the students here, not to mention a taxpayer whose credits paid for this building, and your wages,” he said impatiently. “Besides, I come here all the time, to meet with Pupil Personnel. Everyone knows who I am. And I was called down here, anyway.”

     “Maybe, sir, but you’ve still got to sign in here.”

     The man scribbled his name on the pad with the digipen. Kirlan looked down at it, and managed to make out what looked like _Ardan Teta_ amid the flourishes. “You don’t need to see my identification?” Ardan Teta asked.

     “No, sir. Just the signature.”

    “But that is ridiculous. I could be anyone, and simply say I was Ardan Teta.”

     Kirlan decided he was getting tired of this. “You’re absolutely right, sir. Next time I’m having a drink with one of my numerous contacts at Sector Hall, I’ll be sure and bring that up.”

     Teta pursed his lips and snatched the visitor’s pass. “Which way is the infirmary?”

     Kirlan pointed. “Down that hall.” The man stalked off in the direction indicated, and Kirlan shrugged and went back to the media player he’d confiscated from a student just that morning. _Parents,_ he thought. _Always acting like they’re the freaking Emperor or something._

 

* * *

 

                “Originally, she had been sent to the principal’s office,” Ardan Teta explained to Bane calmly. She, her second-in-command Darth Witicca, who she had called as soon as Ardan had clarified the situation, Niama, and Ardan were seated around the Teta-Vivianis’ kitchen table. “But apparently she was sick in the waiting area, so they sent her down to the infirmary. They had called her caseworker, but she was with another student. Busy. As she has been for over a month.” He shook his head contemptuously. “Useless.”

      “It’s not her fault. She’s the only one they have, and there’s five hundred students in Gaya’s grade alone,” said Niama placatingly. “It’s the fault of whoever decides what amount of government funds go to public schools. Coruscant’s system is nearly bankrupt, and most Core and Rim systems’ schools have the same problems.” She looked up at Bane. “I know you’re friendly with Chancellor Organa. I don’t mean to offend you.”

     “That’s okay.” Bane shifted. “I need to know more about the…event.”

     Ardan nodded. “Gaya could explain it best, but she’s…tired. Overwrought. She knows we never thought she’d be the sort of student who is suspended. We don’t blame her entirely for this, but she’s still hard on herself.” He took a deep breath. “Gaya was in physical education. She’s had difficulty in that class- the instructor is not patient with her, and the other students have taken their cue from the instructor. There were some boys who had been bothering her for a while. We tried to arrange a meeting with the instructor about it, and about her behavior, but she never responded to our messages. Anyway, these boys…they had her cornered, and they were…she wouldn’t tell me details, but they were giving her a hard time. So she…” He paused, articulation failing him. “Well, as I understand it, it was a bit of an automatic reaction, not voluntary, but she…I’m not sure how to explain it. What the proper term is.” He paused again, and made another try. “She shot electricity at them. From her hands. Her fingers.”

     Witicca and Bane were silent, and then Witicca said, “And Master, you re-did the test?”

     “Yep,” murmured Bane, preoccupied.

     “And?”

     “Trace levels. It wasn’t- _shouldn’t have been_ \- enough.”

     “We can produce witnesses,” Ardan intoned. “The boys. Other students, the instructor. Possibly even security footage.”

     Bane nodded. Incredible as it was, she did believe them. But two different tests couldn’t have both been wrong, could they?

     Would the Jedi have a reason to fake midi-chlorian test results?

     _Oh please,_ she chided herself. _Don’t be paranoid. That’s something the old Sith would have thought. That’s idiotic. These New Jedi might be a bit…well, they wouldn’t do this. Besides, I doubt they’d have the stones._

     But then what did that mean? About midi-chlorians and the Force? Even her own Master, Lord Vader, had always told her that you couldn’t have a Force connection without midi-chlorians, and that the number determined the connection’s strength. But that notion was from before the Clone Wars, and it hadn’t been studied in years.

      Could it be wrong?

      _Don’t get ahead of yourself. Slow down and focus on the issue at hand._ “If Gaya did this, then she’s either Force-sensitive or-“ Bane realized she didn’t know what the ‘or’ could be. “Well, at any rate, she should be trained. At least for a little while, so we can see what abilities she has.”

      Niama nodded. “I was hoping you’d say that. We want Gaya to go to your Temple for her education. We don’t want her in that school anymore, and we can’t afford a private school. But she has needs that they’re not meeting.”

      Bane had a notion, not quite through the Force, but from her own intuition. “Needs? Like, what kind of needs?”

     Niama and Ardan exchanged a glance, and then Ardan said, “You understand that if you refuse to accept Gaya at your temple because of what we are about to divulge, we will take your Order to court.”

     Witicca glanced questioningly at Bane, who, for the second time in one night, made an executive decision and nodded. “We’ve got it.”

     “Gaya has Krandyn’s Disorder,” said Niama, a touch defiantly, as if she expected Bane and Witicca to suddenly burst out with interjections of ridicule or disgust.

     Instead, the two Sith exchanged a nod. “We know about that at the Order,” Bane explained. “One of our masters, Darth Griminus, had it, although he was self-diagnosed.”

     Niama smiled. “That’s a relief. Could we meet with him?”

     Witicca looked down, and Bane took a deep breath. “He’s dead,” she explained. “We came from Tatooine, see, in the Outer Rim. We had some members in fighters, protecting the ships with the apprentices and supplies and stuff, and we ran into a renegade Imperial fleet. Griminus was in one of the fighters, and he got shot down.”

     “We lost a lot of men,” Witicca added.

     “Krandyn’s won’t be a problem,” assured Bane. She knew she was probably lying. There’d be kilometers of red tape to unwind once the New Republic clerks got wind that the Order was taking on an apprentice with ‘special needs.’ And there were still the reactions of the other masters, and the other apprentices. Most of the masters had tolerated Griminus’ differences. Asking them to teach someone with those differences would be a whole new problem. _But I’m the Master, and this is my will. We’ll deal with all that however we need to._

    “What about physical qualifications?” asked Ardan, more calmly but also in a hushed tone. “She has balance and coordination problems. And she’s had weight issues all her life. They’re not helped by the physical side effects of the Krandyn’s.”

     Bane smiled, thinking of her own thunder thighs. “I don’t believe we have any physical qualifications, actually.”

    “Every single New Sith doesn’t need to be able to dispatch an entire battalion single-handed,” added Witicca. “People have different skills. I mean, Darth Sidious was, like, a hundred years old or something when he took power, and he only ever sat in his office and manipulated people as far as we-“ He glanced at Bane and coughed nervously. “But, even besides that, once we teach her to harness the Force, she can use it to help herself out with physical stuff.”

    Ardan nodded, appeased. Then, he said, “Although, of course, Darth Sidious did do some fighting.”

    “When he was younger, probably, sure,” agreed Witicca airily. “But he was this old guy, and he looked like he’d blow over in a strong wind-“

    “I’m actually quite certain he fought as an older man, too. I distinctly remember reading that somewhere.”

    “Ardan, they’re Sith,” Niama interjected. “I’m sure they’d know about one of their own. I mean, I understand you guys are different and not into taking over the government now, but you know what I mean. Sorry, my husband is sort of an amateur expert on Palpatine’s regime.”

    “Oh?” Bane smiled politely, trying not to make it a grimace. “Did you ever vote for him?”

    “Absolutely not,” replied Ardan firmly. “Even before he created the Empire, the man subverted the Constitution and cut our civil liberties to ribbons in the name of security. Restricting freedom by playing on fear- it’s the oldest dirty trick in the political book. I think the only good thing he ever did was to try to end Jedi influence over the Old Republic and the Galactic Senate. Although of course his reasons for doing so were barbaric. But the Jedi are a religion, yet they received- and now continue to receive- taxpayer funding and the backing of the Senate, with no oversight whatsoever. But no, I have never supported Palpatine. He makes a fascinating character study, however. You are…less than enamored of him yourself?” He asked Bane, who nodded as brusquely as she could. She really had hoped to be able to avoid this subject, for one night at least. _Just one bloody night…_

     “He was a power-mad bastard who screwed with people’s lives for entertainment,” she said. “He ruined my Master’s life utterly and he completely disrupted mine.” She could feel her mood going sour, and it wasn’t just the Palpatine talk. Ardan created a definite impression in the Force- and so did Gaya, which was encouraging. But Ardan…what bothered her was not that his Force-shadow was fraught with the dark side, but that she could hardly sense it at all. There was the sensation that it existed, but she couldn’t seem to focus directly on it. It was like looking for a black hole- a person could observe its gravitational pull, the absolute lack of light in the space it was supposed to occupy, even the calculations proving its existence. But the thing itself was invisible even to someone looking directly at it through a telescope. Trying to find the black hole of Ardan Teta’s Force-presence made Bane’s head hurt. “Look, send us the paperwork and everything, all right? As soon as everything’s settled at her old school, call us and we’ll make some preparations.” She scribbled down the contact information on the digipad Niama offered her, and stood gratefully. “Don’t worry, Gaya,” she called to the girl still curled up on the couch. The girl could probably do with a kind word. “I’m sure you’ll make a fine addition to our Order, and we’re looking forward to having you.” She led Witicca out of the room as quickly as she could without turning an ankle in the ridiculous boots she was wearing. They’d been a present from Leia, and Bane had so few items of clothing that were not either practical or of cultural significance.

 

           They were silent for a time after that. After things began to quiet down at the bar, Niama had pulled out the manuscript she had been hired to ghostwrite for the publishing company and Ardan had settled himself in the armchair by the small window with a printout of a Senatorial periodical. For their neighborhood in the Orange District and their general economic bracket, they were a literary family. Gaya would likely have read too, had she not still been recuperating from the day. At last, Gaya said, “What if it doesn’t work there, either?”

     Ardan looked up first. “What was that again, love?”

    “What if it doesn’t…work? With the Sith.”

    “Then we will try something else. Homeschooling, maybe. Don’t worry about it. It will work. I can feel it, Gaya.” He smiled at her. “I can’t help but feel…that this is meant to be.”


	3. Jaina

             Jaina Breha Solo tried hard to concentrate on the rerun of _Imperial Girls_ hovering slightly over the 3D plasma screen in front of her. It was at once easy and strangely difficult. The program was a reality show depicting the lives of the daughters, nieces, and even young mistresses of various Imperial higher-ups- ministers, naval officers, and even, for a while, diplomats of the Imperial Senate. It ogled the luxury of the girls’ overprivileged lifestyles, while simultaneously setting the girls up as superficial, malicious, self-absorbed bitches. It had, understandably, been canceled within months of the New Republic victory at Endor, although Jaina had heard that a spin-off, featuring the female relations of administrators and representatives of the New Senate, was in the works. Jaina didn’t typically like reality programming, but the show was addictive and moderately sexy. It was, unfortunately, an all-human cast- Jaina’s personal opinion, although she didn’t like to objectify other females, was that a few pretty alien women would have done the show no end of good.

       On the one hand, the show was not complicated- it was easy to follow, required no intellectual effort. On the other hand, the show…was not complicated. There was nothing to distract Jaina’s formidable mind from whirring away. And at that moment, Jaina needed a distraction.

       The floor outside her closed bedroom door creaked beneath the slow, heavy footsteps of her father. Each member of her family had a distinctive step. Her mother’s footsteps were faster, and more measured. Her twin brother Jacen’s were soft, cautious, even graceful- difficult to hear at all. Her youngest brother Annie’s footsteps were still ungainly, fast and hard against the immaculate floor as he ran, clomping, down the hall. Jaina guessed her own footsteps must sound like something, too, but she didn’t know what.

      She heard the knock. “ _Come in,”_ she said, trying not to snarl. She wasn’t sure if she succeeded.

      Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him walk in- her father always walked casually, as if he owned the place (although in this case, of course, he sort of did)- and settle himself on the side of her bed. He was waiting, she knew. Unlike her mother, her father believed in waiting for the kids to talk to him, unless he was really enraged.

       What was the point in giving him the cold shoulder? It wasn’t his fault he happened to be married to _her_. “Why’s she always got to have some kind of problem with me?”

      He seemed to consider the question. At last, he said, “Well, this one is sort of legitimate, don’t you think?”

      “It’s my body!”

       “Not while you’re a minor. While you’re underage, your health is our responsibility. And since we’re talking about the law, by the way, you broke it, kid. When you went and had that done. Forging your parent’s signature on a waiver is a crime.”

      Even Jaina knew that was right. But only in the technical sense was it not her body. If she were to get pregnant or something, she couldn’t say, “Well, legally it’s not my uterus, it’s yours, so you raise the kid.” If something like that happened, you could bet there’d be talk about ‘taking responsibility for one’s own actions’ and crap like that. It was only ‘her body’ when she’d made a mistake with it. But her parents never listened to logic like that.

      “I don’t see why she’s so pissed,” she opined instead. “Her best friend has Sith tattoos. Two. On her _face_.”

     Her father sat back. “First of all, Aunt Bane’s tattoos look hideous. No, Jaina. They do. Your mom and I don’t want you to ruin your face, which is knockout gorgeous, with that stuff.”

      “I didn’t get it done on my face-“

      “Second of all,” he cut her off. “This tattoo you got- the Running Darkness, or whatever-“

      “It’s called the Pursuant Dark, Dad.”

      “The Pursuant Dark. Okay. This Pursuant Dark tattoo you got is permanent. You get that? As in, never coming off. That thing’s going to be on your arm forever. Even if you get it lasered off, you’re going to have this gigantic scar until the day you die.”

       “I’m going to be a New Sith until the day I die. So, okay.” She shook her head. “See, this is what I mean. You and Mom still think I’m going through a phase. Like when I told Mom how I liked that new Falleen girl-“

       “Cut your mom some slack. She went from being royal to being a revolutionary, and the thing about us rebels was that we weren’t hugely concerned with things like who everyone was attracted to, so she never had any contact with people who have that orientation. You just took her by surprise-“

       “She was worried about her career. The way she always is. And cut out that ‘revolution’ crap. It wasn’t a revolution. Rich people are still rich and the poor people are still poor. It was just a regime change, and I’ve had it with all this crap they sell us in school about how great democracy is-“

      “You know, it’s always so damn cute when you lecture me about what happened before you were even born.” A part of her brain not drunk on rage registered that she’d riled him. He took a breath, and looked at her thoughtfully. “What’s the matter with you?”

      “What, that I’m not some Hothian snow lemming like the others who just blindly follows-“

      “No.” His tone silenced her. “I mean why are you so angry?”

      “Because this tattoo thing is emblematic of the attitude you people take toward my interests and personal values-“

      “No, I mean why are you so angry _all the time.”_ He spread his hands. “Look, I know you’re into the dark side and channeling your anger, and that’s okay because I think you’re right about that- don’t tell your uncle Luke, but you and even Bane are right. You can’t just wish away your feelings. It’s better to use ‘em for something constructive. But you can use your anger without always being angry. I mean, I look back even at the way you were a couple years ago- you weren’t like this. You don’t see your school friends. You fight with us all the time- and I know that’s normal for teen girls, but we don’t just fight, we have these big…things. And they never get resolved. Especially between you and your mom. She tries really hard, and it’s like you don’t even want her to anymore, just so you can be mad at her for not trying. And you’re so cynical. And every time we say anything nice about Jacen or Annie you take it as a criticism of you. I don’t know what you want from us.”

         Jaina struggled not to roll her eyes. Her mother barely tried- everything had to be on her schedule. Besides, the woman was fundamentally the opposite of everything Jaina stood for politically. She was bourgeoisie, so focused on maintaining the status quo that it was hard to imagine how she could ever have been a revolutionary. In fact, Jaina sometimes had the dark suspicion that her mother had led the Alliance mostly so that she could rise to the level of political power she had achieved in the New Republic. That maybe her issue with Palpatine wasn’t his subjugation of freedom, but that he was in her way.

       Couldn’t her father tell that Leia Organa preferred Jacen, and to a lesser degree, Annie? Oh, she loved Jaina, Jaina didn’t doubt that, but personally, it might just be that she didn’t _like_ her very much. Jacen, uncle Luke remarked often, had the character of Luke’s Jedi Master, Ben Kenobi. He was focused on his budding career as a Jedi, and echoed the philosophy of his uncle, that Jedi shouldn’t get involved in politics. He was courteous and _correct_ , a perfect politician’s son. Annie was just cute- he still clung to Jaina’s mother whenever she was home, and was content to sit in her arms for image-ops. But Leia had always used to compare her to Jacen, especially in the area of school reports.

        Her father sighed. “I guess it’s good you’re going to the Sith Temple soon,” he said. “They’ve got experience with angry people. Maybe they can help you.”

        She tried to calm down again after he left, but a few tears of frustration and rage slipped out of the corners of her eyes. Annie, who had an instinct for these things, found her and curled up with his head in the crook between her arm and her side. She changed the channel; _Imperial Girls_ was in no way appropriate for kids his age.


	4. The Question

            Darth Witicca met the girl, Gaya Viviani, at the halfway point between the apartment above the Kimorra and the New Sith Temple. It was a small airbus terminal, barely more than a few stands and a bench, and the generally acknowledged mouth of the Crimson Corridor. He watched the short goodbye between Gaya and her parents- no doubt there’d been a longer one before they arrived- and tried to probe Ardan Teta through the Force, as Bane had done. But Bane was stronger than he was; Witicca found that he couldn’t get through. Ardan Teta was a being who- if the paperwork was correct- made a living fixing ships and speeders and doing the bookkeeping and accounting work for several local businesses, as well as co-managing the Kimorra with his wife. Yet somehow he had the ability, despite no formal training in the ways of the Force, to project and maintain incredible psychic defenses against beings who were- well, okay, certainly not Yodas or Vaders, Witicca thought, but still… _we’re not exactly powerless, either._

 

       “I can help with that,” he said, taking pity on Gaya and lifting one of the two small duffel bags she had brought in addition to a worn blue backpack.

 

      “Thanks,” she said. She spoke in a very quiet voice, he noticed. He had to strain to hear her above the sound of the traffic.

 

     “That’s okay. We don’t have any vehicles except a couple ships and fighters, and all those but one were commandeered by the Navy. So we’ll have to walk. But it’s not far.” He shifted his weight. “So…what do you hope to get out of this experience, young Gaya?” He smiled down at her. “Don’t worry, this isn’t a formal interview.”

 

      “I don’t know.” She seemed to consider it. “Obviously, the main thing is I want to be away from my old school. I just need a place where I can graduate okay and be done with school.”

 

     “What will you do after you graduate?”

 

     “Probably work at the bar full time. Maybe I’ll try to go to university, but it’s really expensive and I don’t think I could get a scholarship. Ardan says I should make a big point of the Krandyn’s so that they accept me for diversity or whatever. I guess he’s right. But…I wish I didn’t have to. I wish I could just be…like, a student. Instead of a ‘student with a disability.’”

 

      Witicca nodded. “You probably hear this a lot, but I do understand that a bit.”

 

     “Oh?” She sounded as if she was being polite, but he pressed on anyway.

 

    “Yes,” he elaborated. “You see, I happen to be gay.”

 

    She was quiet for a while, and that was how he knew it had sunk in. At last, she said, “Oh. Well…that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

 

     He nearly laughed- although she wasn’t looking directly at him (she was watching the ground, for things that might trip her up, he supposed) he could still see her face. “You can ask me any questions you have.”

 

    She hesitated, and then said, “Well, there is something I’ve always wondered.”

 

    “Go ahead.”

 

    “Do…people who are gay like aliens better if they don’t look humanoid, or if they do?”

 

    “It’s a question of personal preference. I prefer more humanoid males- I’m gay and a homosexual, in case you were wondering. But I’ve met people who like species that don’t look like us at all. It depends.”

 

    “And people in the Order don’t give you a hard time about it?”

 

    “At first, they did. But I’m pretty strong in the Force, so once I kicked a few asses everyone started being more accepting. And I’ve been there years, too, so people are used to me. Basically, once you’re in with us, you’re in for good. That was always something I preferred about us as opposed to the Old Sith or the Brotherhood or all them. We look after our own. United, we conquer; divided, we surrender, and all that…You know, I really think you’re going to end up doing well here. We’re all…well, we’re a bit of a motley crew. We don’t all have something technically wrong or different about us, but…none of us is really normal, either.” He snorted. “Ha, if we were normal, we’d be _Jedi.”_

 

     They continued to walk. Witicca saw a few street people look up from the ground or whatever imaginary entity was holding their attention to squint, in the faint red-orange light that filtered down from the air canals far above, at the travelers. They wouldn’t come close; when they’d first moved in, Darth Apathian and some of the apprentices had chased a few of them away from the Temple dumpster, and being chased by a Sith was not a great experience no matter what you happened to be on at the time. Darth Bane had put a stop to that sort of behavior towards the locals, but it was not a thing to be forgotten in a hurry. Now, the beggars avoided anyone who wore a lot of black.

 

    At length, Witicca decided he had another question for the still quiet but now considerably more relaxed Gaya. “Gaya.”

 

    “Yeah?”

 

    “You told me your main goal is to graduate secondary school. But the Temple’s more than just a school. Have you thought if you’re going to carry on with any Force training after you’ve fulfilled your academic obligations?”

 

    “Um, no.” She shrugged. “I mean, no, I haven’t been thinking about that much. I’ve been trying not to, actually. I still think I don’t have it in me. The Force, I mean. Even aside from the test results, I can’t predict the future or lift stuff with my mind or get people to do what I want.”

 

    “Do you think you’re going to fail?”

 

    “With that part of it? I might, yeah.” She spoke so casually of failure that he was surprised, and dismayed. For a while, he struggled for his response. Then he remembered the Question. The Question was fundamental to any Sith’s identity; or rather, the way a Sith answered the Question determined who he, or she, was within the Order; within all orders.

 

     He asked her, “What do you want?”

 

     She was quiet awhile, and then she asked, “What do you mean? Like, what do I want right now?”

 

     “No, I mean- if you could have anything, if you could do anything and succeed- what would you want? What’s the one essential desire you have that is different from what everyone else wants?”

 

     “Don’t all Sith Lords just want power?”

 

    “We’re supposed to.” Witicca peered up at a streetsign, almost totally covered in graffiti, to see how much farther it was. Not far. “Frankly, Gaya, it’s not just about power. It’s never just about the power.” He stopped and turned to her. “So let me ask you again, Gaya Viviani, apprentice to the New Sith Order: what do you want?”

 

     Still not meeting his eyes- but Darth Griminus hadn’t done that either; it was a KD thing, Witicca knew- Gaya stopped beside him and considered the Question. At last, she said, “I think…I want…not to be afraid. Yeah. I want to not be afraid anymore.”


	5. Luke

           _The Sand Person always has another knife._ Seeing Darth Bane always caused New Jedi Master and New Republic Commander Luke Skywalker to reflect upon this regional and somewhat oddly specific Tatooine saying. It meant, according to his uncle, whose stepmother had been killed by a Tusken tribe, that you could never trust a Tusken- even when they’d sworn to you that they weren’t armed and you’d patted them down, it was never a good idea to get one behind you. Luke felt, as a cosmopolitan, progressive ex-revolutionary and citizen of the New Republic, that this was probably unfair to the Tusken; however his own experience with them tended to lean toward his uncle’s position.

     The reason the idiom made him think of Bane was because the New Sith Lord allegedly carried a Tusken-wrought dagger in one of her boots, which were themselves Tusken-made- or, rather, _built_ , or perhaps _forged_ \- from thick, stiff bantha leather which Bane had later dyed black, because a Sith has to have style. Metal sheets were sewn into the lining along the shin, as armor, and since these and the metal beading that decorated the boots always set off metal detectors in security screenings, the logic went, no one would notice the knife.

     Or at least, people said that. “People” meaning, in this case, “Luke’s ward/first apprentice Ken, who heard it from a couple of New Sith apprentices at a pub in the Orange District, which is where he went after he said he was going to study at the Senatorial library.” Ken, at the extremely mature age of twenty-one, seemed to find the image of a female Sith with a dagger in her garter, or in that general area, a highly fascinating subject. Luke found it slightly unsettling, especially since, as Ken was Emperor Palpatine’s grandson by an illegitimate half-alien offspring, Darth Bane was his aunt. That was what made it more disturbing than if, say, Jacen had gotten a crush on Bane. Of course, he and Jaina called her “Aunt Bane” at Leia’s insistence, but she wasn’t really related to them. Ken did not seem to have processed the fact that she was really related to him.

       Now, he watched Darth Bane through a window in the door to Leia’s office. He’d let her go ahead of him out of politeness, and also because he found he took a perverse pleasure in knowing that, in not being openly hostile, he was being the bigger person and killing the Sith with kindness. She was wearing worn black again, but in deference to the fact that she was meeting the Supreme Chancellor of the New Republic, she had pulled on a long dyed-black kirbli-weave skirt and blouse, and a bantha-leather kirdle decorated with silver and gemstone beads. It was Tusken clothing, what they apparently wore under the robes, hoods, and masks. The women, at least.

      He was just starting to think to himself about his experience in the Jundland Wastes over a decade ago, when he had been knocked unconscious by a Tusken and met his Jedi master as a result, when he noticed Leia waving him in.

      “Luke?” Oh no. His sister was using the tone that she used to pacify him after she had just made a political decision that was going to inconvenience him or the New Jedi in some way. “Remember the team you’re sending to the old Jedi Temple? I’d like you to lead it personally.”

     Luke relaxed. That was no problem; he’d secretly wanted to go anyway, but Ken had been bothering him for more responsibility, as the learner with the most seniority. But then he realized Leia’s anxiety ran through the Force even more strongly, and tensed for her next directive. “And,” she was saying. “And, I’m asking Bane to lead a team from the New Sith.”

    Luke didn’t bother to hide his indignation. “Leia, how can you- I know she’s your friend, but that’s _unacceptable_! It’s _appalling_! She’s a _Sith_! She’s the reason we _have_ to send a team to secure the Temple! The reason it’s _deserted_!” He peered at Bane, determining her smugness level. To his mild surprise, he found her lips pursed and jaw set, anticipating the conflict.

     “I think we’ll have less of that ‘You Sith disease’ crap, Commander, if you don’t mind,” she said coolly. “Besides, by that logic _you_ shouldn’t be allowed inside either, on the grounds that your father did the actual slaughter.”

     _“It’s different!”_

    “Why?”

     _“You’re not a Jedi!”_

     “The first Sith were Jedi. Besides, I was trained by Lord Vader, and aren’t you always going on about how he turned back to the light and brought balance to the Force? That sounds quite Jedi-like to me.”

     “ _You know_ you’re not a Jedi!”

     “And you are? The Jedi used to train kids for years from the time they were, like, _two_! They always hated my master because he was ‘too old’! Whereas you had, what, like _six months_ of training when you were _twenty_?”

     “Both of you stop it.” Now Leia was using the tone she reserved for arguing senators, or her children. “That’s enough. Now, you both know we had been sending civilian- non-Force-using, I mean- patrols through the Temple every month or so. You know they’re disappearing and we don’t know why. At first we thought it was squatters, but we’ve sent some heavily armed squads in there, led by trained soldiers, and it’s unlikely that street people could keep repelling them. Besides, we have the Temple under surveillance, and no one except our patrols has gone in or out, and that includes the service entrances in the downlevels. So Bane thinks the Temple could be housing some dark spiritual presence. Something malevolent. If that’s the case, you’ll need backup anyway, and backup that’s comfortable with the Dark Side might help.”

      Luke raised an incredulous eyebrow. “You mean you think it’s… _ghosts_?”

      “Oh yeah, I forgot, there’s no such thing as spirits on this plane of existence,” snarled Bane. “Because _according to the Jedi_ there is no power in the universe except the Force, and we all know the Jedi know _everything_ about the universe. I mean, look how well they predicted the rise of the _Empire_ -“

      _“Dammit, Mara, I said that’s enough!”_ Leia had apparently forgotten herself in her annoyance, and used the secular name she had known Bane by when they had met at school. “You two are going to see what, if anything, is going on at that Temple. Go pick your teams and assemble your equipment. And on the day, try not to act like my twins fighting over what holofilm we watch on family movie night.”

      An ashamed silence followed her remark. At last, Bane said, “Er, Chancellor, there is still the matter of the apprentice I told you about, the one with the individualized education plan-“

      Leia nodded wearily. “Viviani. Yes, I’ll see that all the paperwork is pushed through in time for her to be on your team. And you want to bring Jaina, too?”

      “I hoped to. Didn’t she tell you?”

     “We…uh…haven’t talked much lately.” _Mostly yelling instead,_ thought Luke sadly. He’d hoped that he could soothe Jaina and Leia’s relationship troubles once Jaina was a New Jedi. But now that she had insisted on the New Sith, he wasn’t sure what would happen, except that matters would only get worse.

     Leia sat back and looked up at them. “You are my brother and you are my oldest living friend. I trust you both implicitly, but I’m asking you to curb your argumentative tendencies for this one mission. For your apprentices. Is that understood?” She accepted their nods. “Then may the Force be with you. Both of you.”


	6. The Temple

         The transport, contributed by the New Jedi Order, dropped the teams off at an airbus depot a few blocks from the service entrance to the Temple that they would be using. It was unable to get closer; the space between buildings got too narrow, and besides, Darth Bane claimed, Commander Skywalker was afraid that the transport could get hijacked or stripped by locals. But Gaya thought Bane was probably making a crack about Skywalker being afraid of poor people; they probably weren’t supposed to take her comment literally.

      She had found herself a seat near the front of the transport for the trip, although she wondered how much good that anti-bullying tactic would do her now. Even if she was able to swallow her pride- what little she still felt that she had, anyway- and ask Bane or Commander Skywalker- and she was sure she’d never whine to him about any problems; he was _the_ Commander Luke Skywalker, after all- for help, they might ignore her, expect her to solve her own problems now that she was going to be a New Sith. Already, she was feeling fairly unsuited to the New Sith Order. She’d arrived at the school after having painted her nails her favorite shade of purple the night before. She’d thought it might help her confidence level. That first day of classes, a Twi’lek master named Apathian, with a body like a fitness coach, had asked her loudly, “Why the hell’d you bother painting your nails? You’re going to ruin them in no time, here, and this isn’t a beauty contest.” In the middle of phys ed class, in front of the other apprentices. She’d tried to be respectful and smile through it, but a few tears had leaked out later in the bathroom the female apprentices used as a changing room. She was just glad that for now, she had her own room and only had to see people in class and at mealtimes. She didn’t know any of the others, and they all seemed to know each other. She knew she should be talking to people, but the truth was that she was scared. That was pathetic, but it was true.

     The transport docked, and she carefully folded the book she had been reading into her pack. It was an old-fashioned codex-style tome, printed on flimsiplast pages, but not hardcover, which made it lighter. It was her mother’s old copy of Kamus’ classic epic poem/opera _Ten Thousand Years of Darkness_. Gaya remembered her mother telling her all about the first time she had ever opened the book. “I never got far enough in school to study it, and my family wasn’t readers. I didn’t understand any of it at first, but I just read all those beautiful words…it got me through a lot, that book.” Later, she and Ardan would sometimes read certain scenes to Gaya before bed, in lieu of a bedtime story or holovid. Ardan in particular read it best- he pronounced each word clearly, crisply, and elegantly, so that Gaya could almost taste the words in her own mouth. “It’s a fairy tale,” he explained. “It’s the story of a very powerful, royal woman who loved a very poor, common man. And it really happened; it’s about Empress Teta, who lived a very long time ago.” And even though she suspected the Empress’ life had not really been the stuff of operas, Gaya still loved the story.

     Now, as they walked through the downlevels, Gaya glanced around at the other New Sith apprentices. There was Jaina Solo- Gaya was better with faces than names, but Jaina’s parents, like Commander Skywalker, were famous. She was athletically slender, a year or so younger than Gaya but a few centimeters taller. Her long chestnut-brown hair was pulled back into a sort of elaborate braid behind her head. She wore a sleek black outfit that made her look like some kind of holofilm secret agent. The top showed her arms; one was decorated with a fiery-looking tattoo. She also wore an oppressive amount of eyeliner, apparently mimicking Bane’s eye makeup.

     There were two others selected to go- apparently Bane had decided that the Temple would make an excellent history field trip for those learners still in secondary school. One was a tall, prickly looking girl who wore mostly baggy black clothes, with a silver charm hanging from her utility belt that looked similar to the one on a chain around Bane’s neck. She wore boots similar to Bane’s as well, and carried a primitive-looking throwing knife in her belt. She had been introduced as Ranjana Tharsdottir, and her father was a member of Bane’s mother’s tribe, her mother a member of a neighboring Tusken clan. As the senior apprentice of their group, Bane had said that when no master was present, they would obey Ranjana. The other apprentice was Chad Divinian. Gaya didn’t know much about him except that his father was rich, and that he’d come from some prep school on Andara. She also couldn’t help thinking he wasn’t bad to look at, either. She had seen him staring at her on the trip; once, he had grinned.

     No one in the group, aside from the masters and Ranjana, who took it in stride, seemed to be comfortable with their surroundings. In fact, Gaya felt a sudden wave of anxiety, and a jolt went through her as she realized it was not her own. She was wary, of course, and nervous because at any minute she might have to make small talk with someone, especially Chad, but that was not unusual. Everyone else, including the Jedi team, seemed to be worried about being mugged or getting lost down in that overgrown alley, where even the sunlight couldn’t find them.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

          “We’ll use service and emergency staircases to make our way up to the foyer of the main level, and spread out from there,” Commander Skywalker announced as they gathered in the loading dock.

     “Why?” asked Bane. “If this place is being”- a second-long pause that Gaya picked up but wondered about- “ _used by smugglers or anyone else_ , we’ll be pretty much exposed. If we stick to the back way, it’s safer.”

     “This could be our only chance to see the Temple.” Skywalker seemed testy, Gaya decided. So did Bane, but she always seemed a bit on edge, so it was harder to tell. “I want the apprentices- my apprentices, anyway- to see the entrance hall, the library, the council chamber, and the Room of a Thousand Fountains.”

     “This is a mission, not a tour,” snapped Bane. “Look, Jedi, people have gone missing here. And the New Jedi may have parents lined up around the block who want to sign their kids up to be Padawans, but we at the New Sith have to be a bit more conservative with our students. So you can take yours anywhere you want, but we are taking the back ways. We’ll use the main lifts because this place is too big to just take the stairs everywhere, but beyond that, we’re not going anywhere that’s not secure, not until we’ve swept it. Again, you can do what you like.”

     That made sense to Gaya, but Skywalker just replied, “Then it looks as if we’ll meet up there. In the council chamber.”

     “Sounds fine to me.”

     “Good.”

     “Excellent.”

     “Be seeing you.”

     “And you.”

      “Call us if you have problems.”

      “Ha. You can call us if you have problems.”

     “Fine.”

     “Fantastic.”

     “May the Force be with you!” called Skywalker as he led his team onto one of the lifts.

     “And also with you!” yelled Bane as the lift doors creaked shut. She looked around. “Okay. I’m going to divide you up in smaller groups, and we’re going to sweep the level. Both groups have fifteen minutes. I’ll take young Chad and Ranjana will take Jaina and Gaya. We’ll meet back up here. We’ll go this way, you three go that way. Any problems, call me on your comm. Okay, let’s go.”

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

          “You know,” said Ranjana as they began the sweep of the main level a few hours later. “We should introduce ourselves to Gaya. I know Jaina because she has stayed at our Temple before,” she explained to Gaya. “But neither of us know you.”

     Gaya smiled politely. She knew Ranjana was just being responsible, but she still wanted to be nice. “My name is Gaya Viviani. I transferred here from public school.” She didn’t know what else to say- ‘ _I was allowed to come here even though I have no midi-chlorians, because I was somehow able to zap two bullies in gym class?_ _Oh, and by the way, I have Krandyn’s Disorder, which causes me to not understand your body language and facial cues, gives me crappy balance and coordination so that I am almost no use in a fight, I suspect, and causes me to become a nervous wreck every time I have to have conversations like this, which makes people think I am a bore with anxiety problems. There, don’t you want to be my friend now?’_

      Her brain felt like a blank computer screen, and she could feel her throat closing up out of nervousness. She took a breath and asked, “So…Ranjana. That’s a pretty name. Um…where are you from?”

      “The Thar tribe of the Dune Sea. On Tatooine,” explained Ranjana. “The Tusken, you know? Like Master Bane. Although my mother is Chalahari, not Thar. That’s why my hair is black, not yellow. All the Tusken have either fair or dark hair.”

     “But Master Bane has red hair.”

     “It was from her father’s side of the family, I suppose. I hear he had red hair when he was young.”

      “So, um, Master Bane found you when she…visited her family?”

     “She got my name that way. But at that time, I was living in Mos Eisley. I was supposed to be going to the settlers’ school so that I could use my learning to help the tribe.” Ranjana seemed sad. “I was going to go to law school in the Core at one point.” She _was_ sad; Jaina was patting her shoulder. Gaya hung back- she didn’t know Ranjana well; was it all right to comfort her using touch, as Jaina was doing? She decided not to ask Ranjana what had changed her plans; she was desperately curious, but pressing Ranjana would likely make her feel even worse.

     “I’m sorry,” she said instead. “I didn’t mean to, you know, dredge anything up.”

     “It’s all right, that time is past now.” Ranjana wiped a solitary tear that had trickled from her left eye. “I just don’t like to think of it…the shame. You see, what had happened was…I trusted the wrong people in that city. And I tried a thing I shouldn’t have- I lost focus on my task. I tried spice.”

     Gaya felt on firmer ground now; her mother had been a death stick addict and had managed to kick the habit for good after a few months of effort, starting when she learned she was pregnant with Gaya. It had been hard- she had had no money for detox or rehab, and no support, being an impoverished, barely-legal runaway, dropout, and hooker. Even today, she blamed herself for being addicted in the first place, or for not being able to quit sooner. She thought Gaya’s Krandyn’s was her fault; that the drug had caused it. “It’s not your fault. Some people never get addicted to drugs, and some people do even if they just try them once. And the dealers tell you all kinds of stuff to get you to use drugs, and I’ve heard spice is really bad now because the type they sell is more concentrated.”

      Jaina laughed. “Jeez, Gaya, you know an awful lot about drugs!” She looked at Gaya’s confused expression and smiled apologetically. “Sorry. I was just kidding.”

     “Oh, that’s okay.” Gaya’s face burned with embarrassment. Of course Jaina had been kidding. She should have laughed, too. “No, it’s just that my family and I, we live near the top of the Orange District, and my mom owns a cantina, so she has experience with, you know, that world. But she doesn’t let any dealing go on in our bar. She and my dad- well, my stepfather really- they’re really strict about that. There’s a lot of drugs in our neighborhood, though.”

     The conversation hung unfinished in the air, and Gaya wondered what she had said that was wrong. Yes, it was hard to respond to a statement like that, but that was what they had been talking about, wasn’t it? It occurred to her belatedly that maybe Jaina’s joke had been meant to lighten the mood, maybe to shift the conversation topic. Gaya looked at the other two girls. Jaina looked as awkward as she felt, though Gaya couldn’t be sure- she’d gotten much better at telling these things, but she still made mistakes- but Ranjana looked thoughtful, and less sad.

      Then Jaina said something about some political struggle involving the Tatooine government and the New Republic, which concerned the Tusken in some way. Gaya was not politically unaware, but she knew little about politics outside of Coruscant’s system, and even that was only what she saw on the news or heard her parents discussing. She added comments where she could so that the two others wouldn’t think she was ignoring them, and let her mind wander as the conversation gradually went away from her, and she was outside again. She was used to it. She looked around the corridor they were walking down- it was higher and more architecturally interesting than those below it, but it was so silent it was creepy- their footsteps echoed on the tiles, and the lights, powered by an emergency fueling system, were dim and pulsating, bathing everything in a sickly greenish glow.

      She’d once seen an old pre-Republican holofilm about the Jedi Temple. Some teenage smugglers had broken in, trying to evade capture by the Imperial Navy. They had spent one night in the abandoned Temple, during which time period all four had died in various gruesome, unrealistically staged ways at the hands of vengeful Jedi ghosts.

     They hadn’t been allowed to shoot the movie inside the real Temple- she remembered reading that somewhere, yes, they’d had to use one of the Massassi temples on the moons of Yavin. She’d always wondered why not; wouldn’t that make it all the more powerful as an anti-Jedi propaganda piece? Ardan had agreed that it was strange. They had actually spent time wondering together and inventing possible reasons, each one sillier than the last.

     Ardan always maintained that the Emperor was secretly keeping something there- a mad wife, a cloning facility, a laboratory devoted to discovering the secrets of the dark side. “Or maybe his unholy Sith Master’s undead ghost,” he’d chuckled. “Maybe that’s where the idea for the movie came from.”

     Gaya saw movement out of the corner of her eye, and turned. Nothing was there. She shivered, feeling eyes on her back. She really wished she wasn’t thinking about ghosts right now.

     The Temple felt old, and cold, and very quiet. It occurred to her that after years of silence, their footsteps and voices must seem as loud as an avalanche to anything- anyone- else who might be here.

     She saw it again. “Something’s there.” Her voice echoed in her own ears.

     The other two turned. “What did you say, Gaya?” asked Jaina.

     “I thought I saw something. At the mouth of this hallway. Behind us.”

     “We checked down there,” Jaina objected.

      Gaya made a decision. “I’ll go myself. I’ll be back in a second. I won’t go far. I just have to check.”

     “That’s not-“ began Ranjana, but Jaina shrugged. “Do you want us to come?” she asked.

     “Not if you don’t want to. I’ll be right back.” They had already checked it; there was probably no danger, she’d just look and then not be scared…

     She ran down the hall. Now that she was on her own, she wished Jaina or Ranjana had come. But she could handle this. She didn’t need any more normal people babysitting her…

      She turned a corner, and there he was, in front of her. A boy- a young man- around her age, dark-skinned, with unkempt black hair. For a long moment, they stared at each other. Then, Gaya looked down, noticing for the first time the blaster in the boy’s hand. To her further surprise- and relief- he bent carefully, set it at his feet, and raised his hands slowly before she had time to panic. “It’s out of cartridges,” he explained shortly, sounding as if he was unused to talking.

      Dimly, Gaya heard the shouting behind her. Ranjana and Jaina were calling her name. “I’m over here!” she yelled, voice bouncing off the walls, not taking her eyes off the boy as she reached down to take his blaster.

      Jaina found her first. “Come on, Gaya, we’ve got to get up to the library, Bane found something-“ She fell silent as she saw the boy for the first time. Then, she said, “Gaya, could you go get Ranjana?”

     “Me?” Gaya found that she resented being assigned the role of errand girl, when she was the one who’d found the intruder in the first place. “You know where she is better than I do.”

     Jaina nodded, as she saw the blaster in Gaya’s hand. “Okay.” To the boy, she said, “You’re coming with us.”


	7. The Boy

        Leia Organa Solo’s real name was technically still “Leia Organa.” The “Solo” had never been legally added- she’d kept her own last name, as she and Mara had long ago promised each other- budding teenage feminists that they were, alone in a sea of spoiled politicians’ daughters looking for rich Imperial husbands- that they would. The HoloNet and the public knew her as “Organa Solo” because they had assumed she had taken Han’s name. She had never corrected them because to do so would make her constituents uncomfortable- to them, it wouldn’t seem modern or emancipated, but cold and unfeminine. Was she ashamed of her husband, that she didn’t want to take his name? Why wouldn’t she want to share a last name with her children? Pundits would speculate about her devotion to her husband and family, would accuse her of frigidity and emotional negligence. So the name placard on her desk in the Senate building read “Leia Organa,” but most people knew her as “Leia Organa Solo.” She had accepted this.

      Right now, Chancellor Leia Organa peered through the viewport/ersatz mirror at the interrogation room within. It was gray. It contained a plastoid table and two chairs. One was occupied by a boy of fifteen years or so, of average height, looking underfed. He wore a suit of torn black underarmor and his feet were bare. His skin was the color of strong, milky tea. His face was nearly covered by a full head of greasy black hair. But it was a face Leia knew- a face she had seen before. On the planet Kamino. The night they had liberated that celestial globe of constant hurricane, she had seen hundreds- thousands- of that face; confused, youthful and frightened, yet hardened with a resolve- even a calm courage- that went far beyond their apparent years.

      “He’s a clone,” she murmured.

      Her brother Luke nodded. “Bane says so. She’d know, considering…her history. And his blaster is the standard Imperial issue.”

      “Operating number?”

      “He says he doesn’t have one, anymore.”

      “Anymore?”

     “He claims he was erased from the system, after his defects became known.”

     “What defects?”

     “A normal rate of aging, apparently. He really is the age he looks. That’s the only one he would tell me. But I think there is something else.” Luke’s brow knit. “The Force…behaves strangely around him. I…can’t explain it. I have to work on it.”

     “So why keep him alive?” Leia mused aloud. “Why not euthanize him? And how was he able to get to the Jedi Temple?”

     “He won’t talk to me. He won’t talk to anyone.”

     “Well, no wonder. You people put him in a cell like some thugger who got caught trying to jack a senator’s speeder,” remarked Bane loudly, sweeping into the hallway in a flurry of ragged black cloth. She rubbed one heavily kohl’ed eye. “Sorry, I got here as soon as I could. I found out that Darth Torturian has been ordering all these adult movies on the HoloNet on the Order’s credit chip, so I had to get that sorted- did you say he’s not talking?”

     “Yes,” said Leia, ignoring her brother’s vigorous head-shaking behind Bane’s back. “Do you think you can help?”

     “I have an idea. I can try my best.” She, too, peered at the young man. “Kriffing damn, that does take me back. Look at him, Leia- doesn’t he remind you of Dack? From school?”

     Leia nodded. She noticed that someone had given the clone a thin blanket, and a mug of something, probably tea. Still, as she viewed again the barren room he sat in, she could not help but be struck by a fit of abrupt panic. The sight of the gray walls and fluorescent lighting caused a tightness in her chest, and suddenly she had to think through every breath, had to consciously order her own lungs to inflate fully. Her stomach felt as if it had been carved from a stone, and she felt sweaty, dry-mouthed, nauseous. Horror rose in her throat; she forced it down.

      She realized what it was. The interrogation room had reminded her- unconsciously, over a decade later- of her detention cell on the Death Star.

 

             Bane sat down casually opposite the boy. He eyed her. She knew he recognized her. She hadn’t been the Imperial infantry’s top priority as far as protection was concerned, back in the Emperor’s court, but she’d been on the list of personalities all clones should know and should be ready to take an assassin’s bolt for.

     At last, she said, “Doesn’t it taste like piss?”

     He looked up from the mug, taken by surprise. “What?”

     “The tea. Isn’t it like bantha piss?” She sat back. “I remember when I had to come down here to bail out Torturian and some of the others, right after we got here. You’d think that after the crooks in Mos Eisley, they’d have more common sense about choosing sabacc partners, but no. And then they tried to pay off the debt selling death sticks to an undercover vice agent. What a party that was.” She sighed. “But anyway, I remember that they called Chancellor Organa’s office like I said to, and then this one kid straight out of the academy who’d been giving me airs all night, once he realized I knew the Chancellor, started trying to kiss up. And he brought me some tea, and I remember it was awful. So I wondered if yours was any better.”

      He silently shook his head no.

     “What’s your name?” she asked.

     “Don’t you mean my operating number?” She could detect no sarcasm in his voice or facial expression.

     “No, I mean your name. I know you have one; I never met a trooper who didn’t, not even one who was ‘defective.’” She put air quotes around the word “defective.”

     It was his turn to sit back and fix her with an appraising look. She was struck by his absolute lack of servility; it didn’t bother her, but all the other clone troopers she had ever met were either genuinely obedient, depending on the attitude of the superior they were interacting with, or else submissive with undercurrents of condescension and purposeful stupidity, which most officers went their whole careers without picking up on. Imperial troopers were genetically engineered to follow orders, but that didn’t mean they had to like it.

      Something was different about this boy. Part of it was the experience of being an individual among identical cells in the organism that was the Imperial army, she felt- this boy’s ‘defects’ made him different, although he would never have been treated as such by his comrades. But part of it…she couldn’t say. Some trauma worse than the experience of battle- something that would shake a trooper deeply. And ‘somethings’ like that were hard to find.

     “If you know about our names,” he replied emotionlessly, “Then you know I’ll never tell you mine.”

     She looked into his brown eyes. They were deep, and unique. All their eyes, though the same color and shape, were different. “You know, Commander Cody and his squadron were my first Royal Guard.” She saw his surprise. All clones knew Commander Cody. As the trooper who had served alongside the Jedi general Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Clone Wars, he and his men were legendary for the battles they had won in the name of the Republic- and, in time, the Empire. “It’s true. They were sent to Tatooine on a courier mission and found me with help from the local garrison. They tried to get permission for my mother to accompany me to Coruscant, and when they couldn’t, they took me themselves. They tried to make my transition as gentle as they could. I lost track of them for a while when they were sent offplanet.” She smiled. “The next time I met one of that squad was when I met Dack in prep school. Chancellor Organa and I both knew him, actually. I know you know him, too. Admiral Dack, I think that’s his rank now. He’s the first clone ever to be made an admiral.

     “And you’re like him,” she continued softly. “I heard the Jedi Skywalker saying the Force goes haywire around you, and he didn’t understand why because he won’t let himself consider the simplest explanation; he believes it’s impossible. But I know why, because I knew Admiral Dack, better than any other non-clone ever could. And that’s what the Force did around him. You all know why he was given an education and allowed to rise as far as he has. Perceptive, intuitive, clever- the higher-ups called him that. But you all knew the real reason. You knew he wasn’t guessing, on the battlefield, what would happen next based on his intellect or simple intuition. You knew that he _saw_ what was going to happen next.” She shook her head. “I was apprenticed to my master Lord Vader by then, but we were doing the training in secret and I was sent away to school, and anyway he was an apprentice too. So I didn’t know much. But I tried to give Dack what training I could. I don’t know if he uses it now. Probably not.”

     “I’m from that squadron,” he whispered, eyes wide as saucers. “I didn’t know Cody, he died before they decanted me, but I met Dack once.” He leaned in, apparently trying not to be heard by the microphones in the room. “My name is Cody.”

     “You were named after the commander.” He nodded.

     “It’s a good name. I imagine it’s intimidating sometimes, having a name like that.”

     “Yes, Your Grace. It can be.”

     Bane waved a hand. “There’s no need for any of that ‘Your Grace’ crap. Princess Mara Jade was pronounced legally dead almost twenty years ago; it’s a matter of Imperial record. If you have to call me anything, ‘Master Bane’ is sufficient.” She folded her hands on the table. “Now, Cody, I need you to tell me what you were doing in the Temple. And frankly, any other mysteries you can clear up surrounding what we found there, that’d also be a help. Why were you at the Temple?”

     He swallowed, and replied at last, “I was brought there, Master Bane.”

     “By who?”

     “His Majesty, Emperor Palpatine.” Bane probed the boy in the Force; he wasn’t lying. “Me and two others from my unit. Spaz and Burninator.”

     “Burninator?” Bane recalled the trooper- like all the rest, he had seemed to tower over her when she’d met him at the age of twelve. He was gruff with her, had taken longer to warm up to her than the others. She still remembered his Mandalorian facial tattoo, a tribute to the Mandalorian armor designs that the clones’ uniforms were based on. The foul smell of the thick black cigars he smoked, which he rolled by hand. He hadn’t said much. According to one of the others, possibly Kos, he’d received his current name from his reputed enjoyment of and skill with weapons involving fire. And it was true that in addition to the standard laserblaster all troopers were issued, Burninator was wont to carry a flamethrower strapped across his back when conflict was expected.

     Kos had said that where there were legends about Cody, there were rumors about Burninator.

     Cody the younger was nodding. “Yeah. There was this…thing. On Ord Mantell. There were Rebels hiding in this village way out beyond this mountain chain, in a valley. At least Intelligence said there were. We never found any, I don’t think, not actual Alliance people. But the village was on this hill, and around it was this swampy plain…it was just really bad. There were people shooting at us, so we shot back…but they thought it wasn’t Rebels, just local people…it started to storm, and in the field…we had mud to our waists. Some guys slipped…some drowned. So Burninator pulled out his flamethrower- I never saw him use it before then- and he pointed it at the village…” The boy’s voice trailed off.

     At last, in a small, young voice, he said, “So they found out. The higher-ups. And the local government was pissed, I guess.”

     Bane tried not to dwell on the picture in her imagination…the tall, broad-shouldered, muscular figure in muddy, barely-white armor, pointing the long black tube and trigger- which looked similar to a Tusken pellet rifle, but wasn’t- at the cluster of lights amid the wet, dark cacophony of the storm. His helmet was off for some reason, and the tiny orange spark of his cigar lit his features a moment before the night became as bright as day…”And who was Spaz?” she asked.

     “He was…we didn’t know. He didn’t…couldn’t talk. He would…spaz out. Not like seizures. He’d get…frustrated, we thought. We thought he was frustrated. Kos thought it was that thing they talk about now…Krandyn’s Disorder. Only really, really bad. We thought he had that.”

     “So m- the Emperor took you, Burninator, and Spaz to the Temple. Why didn’t we find them? Where are they?”

     “Dead, Master.” She saw the faint shudder go through him.

     Burninator was dead. She was not sure how she felt about that. “How did they die?”

     He shook his head. “I can’t.”

     “Why can’t you tell me? Did their deaths have to do with…what we found in the great hall?”

     “I don’t know.” He wouldn’t look at her. “I don’t know what you found, Master.”

     “Of course you do. You lived in that place for years. There’s no way a… _perceptive_ young person like you didn’t notice a great heap of humanoid skulls in the middle of the floor.” She leaned forward. “Did you kill them, Cody?”

     “No!” His indignation was completely expected. No trooper killed another trooper except out of mercy; if a trooper was fatally wounded, and in considerable pain. It was, Bane knew, part of the Code.

     “Then who did? Why did the Emperor take you to an abandoned center of the Force instead of just killing you all? Who’s been bringing you whatever you were eating to stay alive all those years? Who piled up all those bones, and left those stains on the floor?” She raised an eyebrow. “Who do you expect me to believe it was- Jedi ghosts?”

     He leaned forward and his voice became a whisper. “Master, please. You don’t understand. If I tell you…if I answer those questions…” She saw naked fear on his face for the first time. “Master, if I tell you what you want to know…I’m going to be next. The… _thing_ that killed them is going to get me. And you can’t catch it, or kill it, or lock it up. It’s going to find me, no matter what you do. And then it’s going to find you.”

      Bane stood up. She didn’t disbelieve the boy, but she still tried to project the cockiness she knew she usually exuded. “Well then, soldier, we’ll have to take you to the one place I know that’s totally safe. Well…not from vandals, I guess, or squatters. Or burglars. Or certain gangbangers and drug dealers. Or government inspectors. But, generally, it’s pretty much safe from anyone- aside from them- who might want to hurt you.”


	8. The Secret Senses

      To be Anzati…

      …is a little like having Krandyn’s Disorder. Humans- humans without that sensory/developmental disorder, as KD is classified in most of the psychotherapeutic texts that have been written about it, which is not many- are nearly deaf, nearly blind, hardly able to smell, taste, or feel. This is because their minds are able to screen sensations; to wade through the sea of sensory input that their nervous systems churn out every second, and to decide which information they need to know, and which information is important.

     Most humans are totally unaware of this. The ancient Sith, Lord Revan, who was brighter than most of his contemporaries- and successors, for that matter- and did not dismiss meditation as the trivial pastime of flaky, long-haired Jedi, observed this phenomenon. “ _Close_ _thou thy eyes, and stop up thine ears,_ ” reads a recent translation of his work (discovered in the apartments of the late Emperor Palpatine on Byss). “ _Realize the temperature of the air, the texture of the raiment upon thy body. Therein lieth the power of the dark: for the eyes open widest in the gloom beneath the mountain, and all the secret senses, which the light of day drowned out, make themselves known in the dark of the night.”_ This passage has been interpreted by most modern authorities, including Darth Bane II (secular name: Maregeode Tharsdottir-Palpatine), to be an admonishment toward apprentices to meditate for a greater awareness of the universe and the Dark Side. But it is also the account of a man who, for a few moments, experienced the sensory rush of a complete lack of nervous-system-screening.

     Humans with Krandyn’s experience this all the time, to varying degrees, according to the “severity” of their KD. The world is a flood- or maybe a storm- of information with little sequence or order to it. This may be one reason for the social awkwardness and ineptitude of those with Krandyn’s. How can you pay attention to the twitch of a facial muscle or the twinkle in an eye when the eye is a brilliant, crazily moving, imposing gem, when the face is a spastic canvas of motions, and when these sensations are only a few out of the flood of all the secret senses, no longer secret, heading your way?

      This is true for the Anzati, too. It may actually be worse; they are telepathic and mildly telekinetic creatures even without the Force, giving them one extra sensory portal. But they’ve had millennia to evolve, to teach each other how to deal with the sensory rush. You sometimes see individual Anzati sucked under the current- out in ‘civilization,’ they’re statistically more likely than other humanoid species to suffer alcohol and drug addictions, and once evaluated by the ‘experts,’ they seem to have a higher rate of psychological disorders. But as a society, as a culture and as a people (however humble and seemingly unobtrusive), the Anzati don’t struggle through the storm- they ride it.

 

To be Vetala Linxo…

      …is to be young, Anzati, and recently female. She’s halfway through adolescence, having telepathically “chosen” her gender at its start. All Anzati children are born hermaphrodite, and during puberty, they decide on a gender and activate the appropriate hormone secretions. Of course, as any Anzat will tell you, it’s less a decision and more a discovery.

      Young Linxo is worried that she discovered wrong.

      Surrounded by the details of her world- the sickly yellow- and red-brown of the stiff, tall grass; the dull black rocks that jut skyward; the gravelly soil; the gray-ivory of distant skeleton trees, scraping the bruise-colored sky, and clumps of gnarled coniferous woods; the distant mirror-lake- Linxo is uneasy. Her thoughts are back at her _uzo_ , still processing the conflict with Xiani from that morning. They are processing her feelings for Wemei, who will never love her back, and they are suffering remorse for her failures, which only seem to become more frequent- her aggressiveness, and her insanity. The clanmothers don’t say it, but they know that’s what it is. Linxo knows that’s what it is.

       Often, it’s a thing that males contract. In fact, Linxo has never heard of any insane females.

      Except for one- and that one female was not Anzati. And that is another thing she is pondering. Worrying about.

      She doesn’t want to leave the uzo, not now. Not when her clan- her village, her school, her family- may need every son and daughter it has. To defend what is theirs, from a threat they will not talk about.

       But she does not want to die- to cease after having barely begun- not even for the uzo.

      It is the only place she has ever been. She loves it there. She hates it there.

      She is afraid to leave, and she is afraid not to.

       And then she is frozen, paralyzed with shock and instincts of self-preservation, dropping to her knees in the grass, letting it disappear over her head. She is stretched taut, listening, barely breathing, adrenaline flowing, her own blood pounding in her ears.

      Linxo is frozen, down among all the other small creatures- the rodents, the small toads, the insects and snakes- whose only defense is to hide and wait.

      She is frozen because she has felt the ship come down.


	9. The People Under the Mountain

        Anzat’s air smelled strange, Gaya thought. It was like the faint scent you got, even on Coruscant, before it rained. But there were elements, too, of the rotting fruit and vegetables from the markets and food stalls, about to be thrown out in the dumpsters, or already there. Gaya supposed that must be the decaying grass, wood, and leaves in the rocky mud beneath her feet. The ground was uneven and slippery; she found that she could stabilize herself somewhat using the basic Force-training she had received before they got off-planet, but she still would rather have had something physical to grab onto.

       At least this air was different from the stale, nosebleed-dry air on the ship. It was cooler and wetter, with a wind that rustled through the grass and blew their hair into their faces. Gaya had never experienced the wind before, except from passing transports exceeding the speed limit. She found herself beginning to smile.

      “Pretty cool, huh, Gaya?” She looked around; it was that boy, Chad Divinian. He was grinning toothily at her. She tried to smile back, but she was nervous- and beyond that, there was something about his attitude that made her want to slap him. She knew he was just trying to be nice, but she could not shake the feeling of revulsion- something about his tone of voice, the way he was smiling…but she didn’t know. Maybe she was just nervous around him. He wasn’t unattractive.

      “Bet you’ve never been offworld before, Gaya,” he was saying. “This must be pretty cool for you, huh?”

      _He’s just trying to be nice…_ “Yeah, um, it’s pretty cool,” she managed, face burning. “It’s kind of …dark, though. It looks stormy. I always thought clouds were supposed to be all, you know, fluffy and white.” She tried to sound jovial about it, but he still seemed to lose interest in the conversation, and walked off toward the circle of apprentices by the ship’s gangplank. After a moment of indecision, Gaya headed that way, too.

       It had been years since she’d even considered the possibility of leaving Coruscant during her lifetime, because she’d known Niama and Ardan couldn’t afford trips like that. But now that she was offplanet, she realized she had always imagined going with her parents. As it was, she was, once again, afraid- of being left behind, of getting lost, or of looking like a baby in front of the others. Since she had found the clone boy, Cody, the newest addition to the Temple, Jaina and Ranjana had been even more friendly. But this was her first real contact with Chad. As for Cody, he barely spoke to anyone except Bane.

        What had changed in her? She wondered. Her mind went back to Niama and Ardan’s five-year anniversary- not since they were married, they hadn’t been married then, but since they had started seeing each other. She’d been about seven. Ardan had saved up, and his present to Niama had been three discount tickets to the Opera House. Gaya, he had explained, was a big girl, and so he was sure she could be trusted to be on her best behavior. Gaya had been thrilled- at getting to dress up, even wearing one of her mother’s necklaces; at staying up late and missing school the next day so that she could sleep in; at getting to participate in such a cultured, grown-up activity as going to the opera.

       The performance had been Kamus’ Ten Thousand Years of Darkness. Banned during Palpatine’s regime, it was one of the piece’s first Core performances in over two decades. Gaya hadn’t known that, of course. But she knew the poem well for her age, so she had been able to follow it somewhat. There had been bright lights and amazing stage effects, grand costumes and dramatic, transporting music. She hadn’t understood most of it, looking back, but she had loved it all the same.

      But what she really remembered was the intermission. Niama had taken her out into the lobby to use the refresher, and then she and Ardan had gone to buy a playbook as a souvenir. _Stay where you can see us,_ she had told Gaya, who, after a night surrounded by people, had begun to get antsy. Looking back, she could have been more specific, considering how literal-minded Gaya had been back then.

      Because Gaya found that if she just climbed behind a curtain and under a velvet rope, and then went up a few stairs, she could still see a fraction of them, if she craned her neck and peered through the curtain just the right way. And then she was able to look around. There were discarded costumes, sets, and props. Above her, in the dim, purplish light, she could make out the catwalks used by the stage crew, and wished she could climb up and look down from them. Around her hung a forest of heavy black curtains, and the world was dark, with colored lights in the distance, glowing around the edges of the objects like strange halos. It was frightening, but grand.

       With the help of a very patient usher, Niama and Ardan had found her lying on her back under the great digitized pianoforte in the back corner. Her parents had been upset, and she had cried a little because she didn’t understand why they were mad; she had been able to see them, had known where they were the whole time. They’d calmed down after the last act.

       She’d always been a wanderer, an adventurous child. She had never been happy staying with the group, waiting for everyone else to catch up before moving ahead. She had always wanted to know what was _beyond_ ; she had never used to be afraid of the unknown. _What happened to me?_

       She brought herself back to the present and forced herself to listen to what Bane was saying. “Consider this your first social studies lesson of the school year,” the New Sith Master was announcing in her usual booming tones. “A field trip to a genuine Anzati _uzo._ Some of you may know the Anzati from the outpost and smugglers’ den on the far side of this planet. These people are not like them. They don’t have contact, by and large, with the world outside their own clans and the communities immediately surrounding them. Many of them have never seen non-Anzati before. Some of them have gone their whole lives without leaving tribal territory. Technologically, they’re so primitive that they make the Tusken look like Kaminoans. But as you’ll find out, they need our so-called ‘civilization’ like they need a hole in the head.” She grinned. It was a strange grin, Gaya reflected- the Master’s somewhat garish taste in lipstick and her Sith tattoos combined to make it look gloating, maybe even predatory. But even though Bane dressed like some kind of twilighter living a housing-optional lifestyle, Gaya felt more natural around her than any teacher had made her feel in years.

       “Oh, and one other thing.” Bane motioned the apprentices into a defensive huddle, sliding Gaya, who had been hanging back, effortlessly in between Jaina and Cody in the circle. In a softer voice, suddenly more serious, she continued. “Now I’m not going to assume this is true for all of you, but I remember what it’s like to be a teen with Force-sensitivity. You’ve got an extra sense other people don’t have. Sometimes, you catch yourself laughing at them in your head; their world is so small to you; they’re practically deaf and blind by comparison, and it seems insane that they could ever presume to be an authority on anything. Sometimes you think no one can touch you. Don’t bother looking indignant or self-righteous, ‘cause you’ve all felt it at least once if you’re honest with yourselves. I don’t care. But hear this: if you pull any of that crap with the Anzati, I’ll personally escort you back to this ship, put my boot so far up your ass that you’ll get mud in your colon, and then lock you in the brig, and leave you until the rest of us are done here. And not just because I won’t let you embarrass this Order when we’re trying to build a galactic reputation. It’s because I won’t let you endanger yourselves and each other. The Anzati may look simple, but they didn’t preserve their culture through four galactic wars and two despotic regimes by playing games. They expect you to behave like adults, because that’s what their teenagers do. Now if anyone doesn’t think they can act their age, _now’s the time_.” Gaya looked around. Jaina looked impatient to get going, although she could be wrong about that, of course, and Cody just seemed resigned. Chad looked happy in a way that made Gaya feel warm inside and sick at the same time. Ranjana was focused on Bane, waiting for orders.

      Bane nodded briskly. “Okay. Follow me, and if you get separated try to get up high, so you can see the ship and go back and wait inside it. You’ll be all right, and I’ll come back for you when I can. Don’t try to find us again or stay in the fields after dark. There could be animals and stuff roaming round. This is one of the last wild places in the known galaxy, you know.” She started off into the grass. “And have your cams and whatever else out. Your parents are going to want souvenirs and evidence of your ‘enrichment’.”

       Chad sidled up behind Gaya as she walked. For a while, he just walked, and Gaya, snapping digital images with the cam her parents had bought her, began to feel a little uncomfortable.

      At last, he remarked, “Nice cam, Gaya.” Gaya looked down at it. The cam was an old model, and secondhand, but it did the job just fine. She looked back up at Chad, and realized he was giving her that same strange grin. It was still very possible that it meant nothing, but…that was what she’d thought about those boys in phys-ed, wasn’t it? It was time to take a chance. So what if she was wrong and he got pissed? He’d understand eventually if he was at all sensitive- he’d see that as far as social signals, she was flying in the dark, and she needed to fly defensively because anything could be out there. He could be being nice, or he could be making fun of her to her face, and as a Sith, she shouldn’t have to take that anymore. Couldn’t take that anymore. The not-knowing was worse than the actual harassment.

       She hoped she was wrong about Chad. At school, she’d hardly liked any boys, and none of them had been at all interested in her. She’d hoped that would change eventually with coming here- maybe Force-sensitive boys cared more about what you were like on the inside than normal ones did.

       And if he never understood…so what? She didn’t need to be friends with everyone in the galaxy.

        She hoped he understood, though.

      “Hey.” Her voice sounded distant in her own ears, and she realized she was nervous. He had begun to walk away- his back was to her, so she couldn’t see his face- so she said it louder. “ _Hey- Chad.”_

      He didn’t turn, so she ran/stumbled through the bracken until she’d drawn up alongside him. “ _Hey_. Look at me.”

      He did, radiating- even to her crappy, KD’d social radar- angelic innocence. “What’s wrong, Gaya?”

      “You know, my cam is old, but I like it.” Her throat felt dry, but she kept talking. “You know why I like it? Because my parents gave it to me. And it wasn’t my birthday or anything. And they don’t have a lot of money for presents.” She couldn’t read his face, but she was no longer trying to. “See, my parents _work_ for a living.”

     He gave her a look that she wasn’t sure about, except that it wasn’t a ‘wounded’ look. “Uh, hey, whatever.”

     “Hey Chad, kriff the hell off,” called Jaina, running up.

     “Hey, it’s not me with the problem. I’m just walking, and she’s the one who comes and starts giving me this weird speech about her parents. I mean, Gaya here _really_ likes her parents, which is sweet, I guess, even though she’s like fourteen. Whatever. But I think she’s got some problem with rich people, so she started harassing me-“

     Jaina cut him off. “Chad, you know what you’re doing. Now kriff off or I’ll get Aunt Bane to kick you out on your ass.” She grinned at Gaya. “You know he’s only here because he’s been kicked out or waitlisted at every prep school in the galaxy, and Uncle Luke wouldn’t take him. Thank gods he’s got the minimum midi-chlorian concentrations to qualify here, or I don’t know what his daddy would do. Maybe he’d have to go to _public school.”_ Gaya couldn’t help but laugh, not only at the way Jaina said the words- and how true it was, about public school being an awful fate- but at the thought of Chad at her old school. They’d steal his fancy gadgets and beat him up for his gelled hair and tailored clothes, which they’d think were “gay.” She’d never been a hotshot on campus, but at least she’d survived. Mostly.

     Chad snorted and gave a half-shrug. “Whatever,” he said again, and sauntered off.

      Gaya looked for something to say. “I totally should have done that with him sooner.”

      “Yeah, I kind of wondered about that. You seemed smart enough to know that whole ‘ignore them and they’ll go away,’ thing is a myth.”

      “Of course it is.” Gaya decided to take another chance. “You know, I did something like this once. More extreme, I guess, but I’m not sorry for it. Maybe I should be, but I’m not.”

      “What’d you do? If it’s not too personal.”

      The ground had grown less grassy and more gravelly. Boulders and piles of rubble dotted the plain. Gaya trained her eyes on them, away from Jaina. “I went to the Jedi Temple to get the test done. For midi-chlorians. I don’t have any. And Bane tested me again before I came here, so it’s not the test.”

      “But you’re here.”

     “Yeah…a few days after the test, I was in phys-ed class. I always had a bad time in that class because I’m not coordinated and I don’t get sports. The teacher thought I was lazy, so she didn’t help, and it made me hate the class even more. And there were these boys- they got all around me. They were sort of playing this keep-away game. With me. And one of them saw this-“ she pulled out Ardan’s chain from under her shirt- “and he tried to touch it. And I was so sick of it. I was close to crying, but I knew I couldn’t cry, not again, not then. And it’s like…at that moment…” she struggled to find words that didn’t make her sound sadistic, and gave up. “Right then…I wanted them to leave me alone. But I wanted more than that. I wanted them to pay. I wanted to hurt them. I told my parents and the principal it was an accident, but that’s only half-true. I wanted to hurt them, and my hands were out like this…” She spread her fingers protectively over her torso, palms facing out at the Anzat wilderness. “This electricity came. Out of my fingers. And while it did, I was…somewhere else.”

     “What was it like?”

     “Cool and blue. Calm. Like being underwater. And for a few seconds, while I was there…it felt so good. I felt satisfied, and peaceful, and safe. I had no regrets.”

     They were quiet for a while, their boots scraping exposed bedrock the only sounds. At last, Jaina said, “Then you must be Force-sensitive. I mean, kriff the tests. That’s Force-lightning.”

     “I guess so.”

     Jaina nodded confidently. “Yeah, I mean, science doesn’t have an answer for everything. It’s the Force. Like, Uncle Luke calls it an ‘energy field’ and tries to find all these quantum explanations for it, like it’s gravity or something. But it’s the Force. It’s beyond our limited understanding.”

     “I want it to be like that. I don’t want to think that eventually, we’ll just know everything about the universe. It would feel kind of sad. And it’s like…how would we ever do things like write fiction or tell stories again? How would we ever imagine things again?”

     “You don’t think we could still do that?”

     “No, I think subconsciously everyone sort of believes in the stories they tell. It’s like how people feel about dying. They know they’re going to someday, but they don’t really feel like they are, and that’s how they can keep eating and sleeping and stuff every day. Otherwise it would feel like wasted effort.” Gaya stopped. She noticed Jaina was staring at her. “What’s wrong?”

      Jaina shook her head. “Nothing. I was just…surprised. I mean, everyone thinks you’re so quiet, and the last time, at the Temple…you didn’t say much.”

      “Sorry.”

      “That’s okay.” They had come to the base of what might be a mountain. A cave yawned in front of them as they drew up to the group, which had gathered around the opening. “You don’t need to apologize.”

     “I know. I do it a lot. It’s for the same reason I also don’t talk that much. I get nervous.” Gaya lowered her voice. “See, I…have this thing called Krandyn’s Disorder. And it keeps me from understanding stuff like people’s tones of voice and facial expressions. So I don’t know how they feel about me, and I don’t know exactly what they mean. So I get nervous.”

     There was another long silence, and then Jaina said, “Um…yeah. That makes sense. That you’d be nervous. Considering.”

      “Hey ladies, I think you might actually want to hear this information,” called Bane, and both girls turned toward her as she began to talk.

 

             The Anzati appeared one by one out of the early evening fog, leading the party down into their underground village. Their guides were three in total, two males and a female. Gaya had expected them to be tall and slender; solemn, grave, elegant people who looked like they possessed the cosmic enlightenment Bane claimed they did. Instead, she saw that, although their individual heights and weights varied slightly, the Anzati were basically a smaller, stockier people, adapted through millennia to the low ceilings of the caves and grottoes they inhabited. Their eyes were narrow and kirbli-nut shaped, with red irises and thick, dark brows and lashes. Their hair- thick, black and as fine as silk fibers- was worn long, and as the apprentices watched, it twisted and swirled of its own accord, as if it were being blown by an imaginary wind. Bane explained that Anzati hair was extremely sensitive, constantly probing the air for everything from changes in pressure to the sound of approaching quarry or threats. The Anzati were omnivores, like humans, but instead of consuming meat, their primary source of protein and iron was blood, which also explained their sharp teeth. From the Anzati, who were dressed simply in non-dyed tunics or jackets with loose, short trousers (the males) and wraparound dresses or sarongs with tunics or jackets (the females), and who acted respectful and very friendly to Bane, who was not a stranger to their _uzo_ , had come the galaxy-wide myths of the ghastly, undead, irresistible creatures known as _vampires_. In fact, Bane explained, although the Anzati could render their enemies unconscious through a mode of telepathy not unlike hypnosis, they rarely drained the blood of anything but animals. The only exception would be if they felt their community was in danger; to them, there was no higher good than the _uzo_.

        All male Anzati were warriors, as the apprentices saw- every male approaching maturity seemed to carry his own weapon. Yet all decisions regarding the government of the clan were made by a council of females; these women were led, when the efficiency and decisiveness of executive leadership were necessary, by a clanmother. This female, Vetala Xiani, reacted to Bane’s arrival with every indication of happiness. She had met Bane many years ago, when Bane had first escaped the Imperial court, and the freighter she had bought passage on crash-landed on Anzat. In those days, there had not been an outsiders’ settlement on the planet, and Bane would have died had she not found the Vetala. Xiani had been less experienced then; she and Bane had taught each other leadership. It had been years since the women had last seen each other, but to an Anzati, this was practically no time at all. Xiani invited Bane and all her students to eat with the tribe, but privately, Bane instructed the apprentices not to eat much of the uzo’s food, to stick to their rations as much as they could. “It’s autumn here, and they need to stockpile as much food as they can for the winter.”

       In honor of their guests, the Vetala had prepared a few entertainments before the clan retired for the night. Several of the younger ones, coached by a few patient, cheerful younger females, performed a skit that, according to Bane, was based on their creation myth. An oral recitation of the uzo’s history followed; none of the apprentices could follow either attraction, since they did not speak the Anzati language, which was half telepathy anyway. The evening concluded with a dance and folksong performed by an unusually slender girl about their age. She was very talented, with a high, pure, crystalline voice and a light-footed way of moving that made her feet seem as though they hardly touched the cavern floor. Darth Bane explained that she was Vetala Linxo, the Force-sensitive who would accompany them back to Coruscant, possibly the daughter of Xiani. It was hard to know for sure; all children were raised communally within the clan.

         Gaya would have loved to stay awake and process all that had happened that day, but to her surprise, as soon as she rolled herself into her sleeping bag, she began feeling drowsy. She slept for a time, and awoke during the night to find that the cave the apprentices had camped in was nearly black. She lay awake, listening to the sounds of the cave and trying not to feel alone in the dark- Jaina and Ranjana slept on either side, Bane near the entrance, Chad and Cody a meter or two away- when she realized that both Cody and Bane’s sleeping bags were empty.


	10. The Caves of Althingard

        The passageway was almost totally black, with the glitter of mineral deposits and tiny jets of water trickling down the rock walls reflecting the light of distant torches and embers, casting a thin, silvery glow. The only sound was the dripping of the water; Gaya’s footsteps seemed to echo on the stone floor as she pulled herself slowly along the hall, trying to avoid slippery patches.

       She had no idea where she was going or, if Bane and Cody actually were in trouble, what kind of help she could realistically offer them. But she’d tried to wake Jaina, and that hadn’t worked- the girl was too heavy a sleeper- and Ranjana had just muttered something in what was presumably Tusken and rolled over. And Chad…that was just not an option. The last thing she wanted was him walking behind her in a dark passage neither of them knew well.

       She was by no means the ideal apprentice for this. But there was no one else, so it was going to have to be her.

       She had taken Jaina’s lightsaber. She’d left a note on her digipad explaining what had happened. She hoped Jaina wouldn’t be too pissed.

       She could see what looked like a cave entrance up ahead; it glowed faintly orange with flickering firelight. She pointed her feet toward it.

       She was sure there was something behind her. She didn’t dare look over her shoulder because…why? She didn’t want to admit to herself that she thought it might be an actual possibility? Or she was just afraid that she might actually see something? She tried to listen- maybe Chad had woken up, maybe he was coming- but all she could hear was her heart pounding in her ears.

       She crouched down and peered ever so slightly around the edge of the opening. Bane and Xiani sat on mats around a low fire. Gaya breathed out. So there Bane was; but where was Cody?

       Still, out of curiosity- and because she couldn’t yet force herself to vacate the warm corona of light coming from the entrance- she made sure neither woman could easily see her, and leaned in as close as she dared, straining to listen to the conversation over the crackling fire. They appeared to be speaking in Basic, a fact which struck Gaya as narratively convenient but unlikely, until it occurred to her that Xiani might not want other Anzati to hear what she was saying, whereas Bane would not be expecting her apprentices to want to wander through damp, labyrinthine caves in the dark just to eavesdrop on her.

         “Are you certain of it?” Xiani was asking uneasily.

         “Of course I’m not certain. Any sensible citizen of the galaxy would laugh me out of the room for just considering it. But this stuff…circumstantial evidence, I guess you could call it- it’s piling up. I mean, think about it. You people have that one cavern, where you say that a- what was it?- a giant blood-sucking serpent of some kind lives there. How likely is that, though? You say none of the other uzos have experienced anything like it. So considering no one’s even seen the thing, isn’t it more likely that it’s…it? Her?”

          “Bane, we must be careful. _You_ must be careful. Do not speak of this to your apprentices. Especially not Linxo.” Xiani shifted. “What other ‘evidence’ have you seen?”

        “My tribe had a cave like yours. We were told the evil god Lochi lived there, and that if we disturbed him, he would feed us to his harem of blood-sucking witches. We’re…highly inventive with our cautionary tales.”

       “I thought your tribe were…what is the word? You roam around.”

      “Nomadic. Yes. But for a few months out of the year, our planet- or at least, where we live- gets these constant sandstorms. So when it gets really bad, we take shelter in this group of caves under Whitesun Peak. We call it _Althingard_ \- the place, the season, everything. The Chalahari have caves they use for that, too. You can’t live outside for prolonged periods during a sandstorm, even if you seal up your tent completely.” She peered into the fire. “But one of those caves- a big one, the deepest one- we couldn’t live there. The only ones who’d even visited were our shamans. It was forbidden to go into it without a specific spiritual purpose; there was almost always this big stone rolled over the entrance. It was forbidden to bring in light of any kind. Our shaman Echydna used to say the entrance to the pit of Hell was down there. And there’s something else.” Both Xiani and Gaya leaned in closer to hear.

       In a low voice, as if saying it at all brought her a deep and abiding shame, Bane mumbled, “They used to do human sacrifice down there.”

       Xiani’s narrow eyes became wide, almost mouse-like. “What do you mean?”

      “What I said. It was long before my time, I never saw it happening. Before my mother’s and grandmother’s times, too. I only know about it because before the Empire took me, I was Echydna’s apprentice because of my Force-sensitivity, and she told me once. The adults of the tribe never liked to talk about it. They were ashamed.” Bane’s large arms gesticulated expressively, causing the shadows on the wall and ceiling to dance. “Every few years or so they would take either a boy or a girl- usually it was a boy, I never knew why- and when it got to be winter, and the tribe went up to Althingard, there would be a big celebration to mark the closing of the old year. And after the celebration, the shaman would escort this person- and I don’t want you thinking it was a kid; it was always a teenager, or a young adult, they never did it to kids- to the deep cave. The stone would be rolled back, the shaman and the boy would go through- and then a few minutes later, the shaman would come out. Not the boy. And they’d roll the stone back, and that would be that. Except sometimes people claimed there were screams, after the stone was rolled back.” Bane shook her head. “Echydna said they would always give the person a lot of alcohol, to lower their awareness, I guess, and to dull…whatever pain they thought there might be. Sometimes…sometimes, she said, they would sort of…feed the person up all through the year. Like they were going to be eaten.”

        “What made you stop?”

        “From what I can tell, it was several things. First of all, it was a bloody practice- and we have some pretty bloody practices, but this was the worst- and nobody felt good about it. Parents were too worried about their kids; the lottery was tainted, there was bribery going on- it wasn’t even fair anymore. Plus, this was around the time the settlers started coming over en masse, and it’s hard to act indignant about insults like 'savage' when you’re doing a thing like human sacrifice. Plus, the settlers didn’t sacrifice anything, and nothing was happening to them. So the tribe voted and got it stopped. For a few years, they would hold an annual vote about whether to start it again, but they even stopped that because it was so pointless- it was always a pretty unanimous no.

           “But that’s what all the stuff in the Jedi Temple made me think of. All those bones- especially that pile of skulls. They were swept into this neat pile- it was almost geometric. Very ritualistic. And it was so dark- the lower levels weren’t so bad, because the emergency lighting still worked fairly well- but the main level, the upper levels…all the lighting had been sabotaged. Purposefully. And all the windows on the main levels had these thick blackout curtains. Newer curtains, and well-maintained. As if they’d been kept up. So that light couldn’t enter those parts of the Temple. It made me think of the deep cave at Althingard.”

        “Do you believe that the… _entity_ that we _may have_ here is the same type your people appeased? Why would a thing like that care about this Temple?”

       “I don’t know. I mean, I guess Coruscant really doesn’t have any deep, unexplored spaces underground anymore, so if you wanted a big, vacant place to dwell, that would definitely be a place. But then I guess the question becomes, why would this thing want to come to Coruscant?”

       “Could it be a…Sith thing?” Xiani voiced the question tentatively, as if hoping she was wrong.

      “Why do you ask?”

      “Because…you know we were once invaded by the Sith, when they were under the command of the one they called Darth Bane, before, it is said, she smashed her own empire and the Sith disappeared. We were…terrified of Bane, although she was not so harsh with us as she was in her later conquests. Her own men were terrified of her as well. You could tell. And there were rumors…they said she did things with the Force that could not be done. But we were frightened because we had never met a human who was…like us. Who could do with her mind what we can.

       “Down in the valley, there are uzot that believe her essence never died. That she is still in this universe. That she is stronger than death. It’s one of the reasons we were so suspicious of you at first. You were a human and an outsider bearing her name.”

      _“So Bane the First WAS a female!”_ Bane pumped a fist in the air. “ _YES!”_

      “Hush! You will wake someone!” hissed Xiani. “I want none of my clan to learn of this theory. They would panic.”

      “Sorry. It’s just that we just discovered all these old diaries in an archaeological dig on Korriban, and they seem to suggest pretty conclusively that she was, but we’ve had all this resistance from these male Sith enthusiasts who used to work under the Emperor, because they say that since on average women are weaker than men, there were no women Sith. If your uzo memory banks are as good as I think they are, those sexist bastards can suck it.”

      Xiani threw up her hands. “I am telling you that a long-dead Sith may be roaming our land, and that is the piece of information that makes the greatest impression on you? What gender she was?”

       “You don’t understand. Gender is a big thing out there. Almost bigger than sexual orientation, even species orientation. Our genders are assigned by nature, so gender roles are fluid for us. Here, you guys have men fighting and hunting because that’s generally their specialty, and you have the women doing the childcare and diplomacy and political stuff because that’s what they tend to be good at. And people choose which one they want, so it’s okay. It’s not like that for us. You wouldn’t believe some of the crap our own Republic’s statesmen have spewed, let alone what the Empire used to say.”

      “Listen, Bane, you say the Empire guarded that Temple until your battle at Endor,” said Xiani, apparently trying to get things back on track. “You knew its soldiers. What did they say about it?”

      “Come to think of it, there were some rumors. I know that Temple patrols were thought of as a really crappy assignment. Troopers would rather work Nar Shadaa than the Temple. And that always struck me as weird, because it’s guarding an abandoned building in one of the most advanced cities in the galaxy. You’d think that would be cushy. But they said it was given to people the Emperor wanted to make disappear. But nobody would really tell me about it. Not even Lord Vader. He hated for me to bring it up.” She didn’t like to think of those memories; Vader had been a fearsome person to have angry at you, but beyond that…while she was in the Emperor’s court, Vader had become her teacher, and her rock. He had lost his wife and child in the Clone War (or so she’d thought at the time), and her own family was either far away or about as affectionate as a duracrete wall. In a sense, they had adopted each other, and deep down the idea of Lord Vader being frightened of anything still bothered Bane. “I know at one point they tried to have administrative offices there. It didn’t work.”

       The silence grew loud with the hiss and pop of the fire. Finally, Xiani said softly, “What can I tell my people?”

       “I don’t know. Maybe nothing yet. Not ‘til we know more. I have to get back to the Core so I can contact my tribe and grill Echydna for what she knows. I need to have a look at some Sith volumes. Some files from the Temple we recovered, maybe. I’ll tell you everything I know as soon as I know it. But you know, I’m not sure there’s much urgency. This entity, whoever it is, hasn’t made much of a move for centuries. I can’t think why it would change its policy now- unless…oh gods.”

       “What?”

      “He was appeasing it! Maybe. The Emperor. That’s what those temple patrols were for, especially the one young Cody described to me. And now that he’s stopped…still, there’s nothing we can do yet. We have to wait for the other shoe to fall. Hell, we have to wait for the _first_ shoe to fall.” She rattled off a string of Tusken. “That’s an expression we have. Basically, it means, ‘we’ll know what is going on when it blows up in our faces.’ Of course, that’s not a direct translation.”

      “Should I move us?”

      “I don’t know that there’s much point. It can probably hunt you down if it wants. I wouldn’t tell people about this. If it’s nothing, and we tell them, they’ll be panicking for no reason. If it’s really bad, and we tell them, they’ll still be panicking for no reason because if it’s that bad, there’s probably nothing we can do.”

      “Perhaps I should send a male with Linxo. So that, if something does happen, together they can preserve-“

      “Don’t get crazy on me, Xiani. This is not going to be the end of the Anzati people. It’s not even going to be the end of this uzo. You weathered the Bane the First invasion and you’ll weather this too.” She yawned and stretched like some sort of feline. “There’s nothing we can do tonight. Tomorrow, when it’s daylight, I’ll light a torch and check things out down there. In the meantime, I for one am going to get some sleep.”

      Gaya gasped. Feeling almost paralyzed with the dread of being discovered, she forced herself to move- to stumble, and then to run, back down the passage. She thought Bane might have seen her; she couldn’t be sure whether or not the New Sith Master had called out to her retreating back.

       The tunnel grew steep beneath her feet, slanting down like a ramp before evolving into some narrow, rough-hewn stairs, all before Gaya even noticed the difference. It didn’t occur to her until she was already falling that this was not the passage she had come from.


	11. The Chancellor's Office

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flashback time!

         He felt the cold seeping into his senatorial apartments early that morning, so early it was really still late. The cold was almost a physical presence, invisible tendrils of frost creeping in under the door. He awoke shivering under the thick, soft, warm blankets, skin clammy against the silky sheets. The bedchamber was dark, even with the city lights filtering through the blinds, and even with the city’s sounds, the bedchamber was silent. It felt remote, and he felt disoriented and afraid, a feeling he had not had in years. It was as if he had never seen the room before in his life.

       _Afraid of the dark,_ he taunted himself. _Like a child_. But it didn’t seem funny. Part of him was afraid that if he laughed, if he even thought about the dark in the wrong way…never mind.

        Moving more quickly than he would have believed he could outside of battle, he reached over and switched his lamps up to full power, heaving a sigh of relief that he hadn’t known he was holding.

        But there was still the cold. The warm yellow glow of the lights didn’t help. He had a feeling that turning up the heat wouldn’t help either.

       He reached out through the Force, but it was foggy, and seemed to repel him. He felt blind. The fear surged back up, nearly taking the contents of his stomach with it.

       He dressed quickly, pulling a thick, official-looking robe on over his sleep shirt, and pulling his boots on without lacing them.

       What Force-connection still remained open to him pointed him toward the Senate building, like a star hidden behind a dust cloud, pulling planets into orbit around it. Every cell in his body shrank back from that building tonight, screamed for him to go far away from it. Which, of course, meant that it was where he needed to go.

 

          At this time of night, the Senate building was lit sparingly, by sickly neon glowstrips. The front desk was long closed, of course, but it was a simple matter to disable the alarms through the Force, and to slip through.

       He knew that whatever was happening was on the top floor, in the Chancellor’s office. The lift was operational, but he didn’t ride it up all the way. He took the emergency stairwell the last few floors. He didn’t want the lift to be heard docking on the top floor. On the last stair, he tripped over nothing and nearly fell forward. He realized, after a moment, that it was because his knees were shaking.

      It was getting darker, the farther up he went. The lights stayed on, but the shadows grew deeper, and seemed to move at the corners of his eyes. There were so many of them.

      Outside Valorum’s office, the cold was like a solid layer of ice in the air, but sweaty. He peered into the room, trying to remain mostly out of sight. The office would be empty, of course; Valorum wouldn’t be there at this hour. Even he would be at home by now.

      The door hissed open before him. He had not pressed the panel, and anyway, it should be locked by now.

      The universe seemed to be silent, holding its breath. At last, he forced himself to walk through the doorway.

      Valorum was there. He was sitting at his desk. Slowly, his chair turned to face the newcomer.

      As the chair turned, a beam of light- from some passing traffic outside, perhaps- illuminated Valorum’s face.

      After the night and early morning Sidious had faced, his nerves were scraped raw with disorientation, separation from the Force, fear, nausea, and sleep deprivation. As his cool blue eyes, so usually calm and placid, fell on the thing in the chair’s face- it couldn’t be Valorum, his sensible brain said later, and it was right- a cry tore from his throat and echoed around the chamber.

      The Valorum in the chair, watching him now, was a rotting corpse that stared at him through wide, distant, misshapen eyeballs bulging grotesquely from its face. It sat limply in the chair, leering blankly at him, the only sign of animation a faint blue-black light deep in its pupils.

      After a few more silent, horrible moments of the dead man’s stare, the thing- Valorum as a decomposing body- began to change. It dissolved into black smoke, which reformed itself almost elegantly into a thing- a being- _an entity_ that was most certainly not Valorum.

       The cold was still there, but Sidious no longer noticed it, because now the cold was inside him, as if his blood and muscles were frozen solid, weighing him down, anchoring him to that spot before the desk of the Supreme Chancellor. Later, he would half-convince himself it was a bad dream, and some days, he would believe himself. But now, he could only stand, mute and immobilized, before the Master of the Dark Side.


	12. The First One

      For a while after hitting the stone floor, Gaya simply lay there. Her first thought was of the pain. She couldn’t tell if anything was sprained or broken, never having been in a position to sprain or break anything before- that was the kind of injury that happened to athletes, daredevils, the Jaina Solos of the universe. This pain was more generalized- it was like when you rode the hoverbus home from school on a crowded day, when you were forced to stand and grip the bar or some handhold as best you could. The bus driver would navigate the traffic like a podracer in debt, and inevitably you would lose your balance and fall against a seat, a wall, or other passengers, sometimes hard enough to bruise. This was that kind of pain, but much worse. Gaya supposed she should be glad she hadn’t fallen on her head or neck, or broken her back.

      Through the sensory cloud that was the pain, Gaya eventually did process other pieces of information. The grittiness of the stone floor might mean dust, which in turn could signify that this place was not often swept, or in use. The darkness around her was at first nearly absolute, so that she couldn’t immediately tell the difference between her eyes being open or closed. At length, as her eyes adjusted, she realized there was a slight difference in light quality- when her eyes were open, the world appeared slightly less pitch-black than it did when they were closed. A faint gray light, silvery, like moonlight, was filtering into this cavern from some point far ahead. To even call it ‘light’ from this distance was generous, Gaya thought; all it was was relative not-darkness. With difficulty, Gaya raised herself to her feet and slowly made her way toward the not-darkness, keeping a hand to the stone wall to steady herself. It was disconcerting, walking over ground you couldn’t see. She tried to use the Force to create an outline of it, at least to find out if there were any yawning pits in front of her. It was difficult, although manageable- the Force faded in and out down here, like a hologram’s reception when the signal was barely wide enough.

      The passage became gradually lighter around her; it was a welcome surprise when she realized the ground was visible beneath her feet. She quickened her pace. It occurred to her that someone like Chad- maybe even someone like Jaina- who was used to Force-sensitivity, who had always had easy access to it, like a third eye, might feel intimidated by not being able to rely on it in this cavern. She took some small pride that it didn’t worry her unduly, the fogginess of the Force- that she was able to depend on her other five senses, as she had done most of her life, barring a few moments of déjà-vu and some faint instinct of what the next twenty seconds might hold, which she had always dismissed as intuition.

      The passage opened up before her, and she realized where the light came from. The cavern that her passage opened into was easily the most gigantic space she had ever been in, big enough to fit the theater of the Opera House inside with room to spare. It was a round, high-ceilinged room, looking like the inside of an egg. Moreover, the cavern was a geode- the sloping walls and even the floor glittered with gems of some kind. It was difficult to tell what color they were in the dim, milky glow that they refracted. Wedging her thankfully booted feet into the crevices between the gems, which ranged in size from the size of her big toe to larger than her head, Gaya managed to take a few haphazard steps forward into the enormous geode-room.

       She nearly stumbled over Cody, who was perched on a large, relatively flat gem, curled almost in the fetal position, knees tucked against his broad-shouldered chest. Gaya jumped when she saw him; until her eyes adjusted to the sight, he’d looked like part of the geology. “Cody!”

      He jumped and flinched, turning to look at her. “What the hell are you doing here?” he whispered.

      “What am _I_ doing here? I woke up and you and Master Bane were both gone, and I found her, but-“

      “Keep your voice down,” he hissed. “Now listen to me…Gaya. You have to get out of here. Now. You are in danger of dying in a very painful way, and so is everyone else. So get out of here, run up those stairs as fast as you can, find Bane and have her get all the rest of them offplanet. Do it _now,_ before-“ But his voice trailed off as his gaze shifted away from her. It was then that Gaya noticed the silver-gray light becoming slightly brighter.

     Cody whispered, “Forget it. Too late.” He turned and glared at her hard. “Don’t talk. Don’t move. Let me do the talking, and just try to look…respectful. And harmless.”

     _For me, that shouldn’t be hard,_ thought Gaya, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was too curious, too scared, and suddenly too _cold_ to maintain her usual attitude of what she herself admitted was pathetic self-pity.

      The geode-arena was vast, and the inconsistent texture of its floor, which featured some large gems that obscured the area behind them, meant that it was hard, from ground level, to see directly across the chamber. Gaya looked in the same direction as Cody, and realized something- the thing the glow emanated from- was coming toward them. She tensed, and gave another jump as, out from behind a large gem outcropping, stepped a young woman.

      She was not actually very tall, Gaya noticed. However, like Ardan- the thought of him and her mother sent a twinge of homesickness through her- the woman was one of those people who had a quality of _tallness_ about her- it had something to do with the way those people carried themselves, and with the way they walked, but Gaya could never exactly define it. It had to do with confidence.

     The woman was built slender, even petite, only a few centimeters taller than the tallest Anzati. A long mane of red hair, similar to Bane’s but longer and slightly less curly and voluminous, hung down below her waist, almost to her knees. The matted hair framed elegant, angular features, with eyebrows and eyelashes the same color as her hair, making them appear so fair that Gaya almost couldn’t see them. Despite the deep orange-gold of her hair and the dark red of her lips, there was something cool about her, and Gaya realized that the woman’s skin, which was so fair it looked white, was glowing very softly with an almost fluorescent white light. The woman seemed lit from within, a paper lantern in the shape of a person. She also moved as if she was not actually tethered via gravity to the ground, and only touched it when she remembered that she had to. And though her movements were smooth, there was something restless about her- her shoulders and long neck swayed faintly as she peered at them from various angles, her hands clasped each other excitedly, long fingers entwining.

      Wordlessly, with an expression of guileless inquisitiveness, she bent down so that her face was centimeters from Gaya’s. One white finger traced Gaya’s features and neck, and momentarily stroked her hair. Gaya tensed; she wasn’t one of those people with Krandyn’s who typically got freaked out about physical contact, but she did wish this random woman, no matter how beautiful and eerie she was, would stop touching her.

      The woman seemed to sense Gaya’s discomfort; still looking good-natured, she stepped back and said something to Cody in a language Gaya didn’t understand. Nevertheless, she knew she had heard it before, very recently. She realized she had heard two of the New Sith- Witicca and the Twi’lek, the one who didn’t seem to like her, Apathian- speaking it.

     Cody tapped Gaya on the shoulder and bent close to her ear. His breath felt pleasantly warm in the air, which had grown inexplicably cold, and Gaya felt tiny bumps rise on her shoulder and neck as he spoke. “Gaya, this is the spirit of Darth Bane the First. She’s this…kind of a ghost. But solid. Because she drinks blood. And sometimes she…eats flesh. It makes her physical. I don’t want her to kill you. Or me. So please don’t piss her off.”

     Gaya felt her chest constrict out of shock. She took a deep breath, struggling to fully inflate her lungs. “What can I do?” she whispered to him when her voice worked again. “To…help the situation?”

      He seemed vaguely surprised at her response. “Uh…I don’t know yet. Just be cool.”

     Gaya nodded. She looked up and saw the woman gazing at her. Aware of the implications of this, Gaya tried to offer a small smile.

      Cody and the woman had a brief exchange in the language. Gaya felt sure it was about her, but she knew she could be paranoid about that sometimes. She’d learned that paranoia at her old school.

      At length, the woman sat down on a gem across from Gaya, who had stood up as an afterthought (Cody had tried to drop to one knee, but the pointy parts of the floor had necessitated a kind of squat). She motioned for both teenagers to sit.

      Then, moving too fast to see, the cool palm of her hand pressed itself to Gaya’s forehead. Gaya tensed again, but instead of any kind of pain or paralyzing effect, a series of visual images and brief tableaus like clips from a holovid crowded into her consciousness. For a moment, Gaya struggled to process them, and then she found, to her surprise, that their meaning was obvious once she stopped analyzing them and let them flow around her mind. She couldn’t understand if she overthought them, but on an intuitive level, they were fairly clear.

      _Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you, or young Cody. I will leave the Anzati in peace, and I will not harm those you came here with._ The silent, mental voice seemed so magnanimous, Gaya immediately felt her terror start to dissipate. Beside her, Cody remained rigid, eyes trained on the woman, who took her hand away from Gaya’s forehead and began to converse with him haltingly- she seemed barely fluent in the language she spoke, yet she did not try to speak Basic. Gaya wondered if she knew it. Yet the woman seemed to speak more slowly than Cody did.

      At last, Cody turned and murmured to Gaya again. “She wants us to take her to meet with Master Bane. She wants to come back to Coruscant with us.”

      “Why are we whispering?”

      “She hates loud noise. And bright light. It’s not because she’s…dead, she just doesn’t like it.”

      “Oh. Um, okay.” Gaya took a breath. “Is she…pissed at all? Like, at Master Bane for, you know, being in charge and having the same Sith name?”

      “I don’t think so. Hard to tell.”

      “Wait. She can understand us, right?”

      “The gist of it. I think it’s okay. She knows I have to explain things to you.”

      Gaya looked up at Darth Bane the First. She decided to say something. “Um, it’s nice to meet you…my Master.” That tended to be a fairly universal way to address Sith who were further up in the hierarchy than you. She was pretty sure Witicca had said that at one point. “Sorry I, um, interrupted your, um, meeting with Cody. I was just afraid something had happened to him. Thanks for not, um, being angry about it.”

      Bane the First smiled at Gaya. It was a warm, kind smile, and there were only two things about it that seemed even remotely unusual. The first was that the woman had odd teeth- they were bright white, and seemed sharp. The second was that her eyes- when Gaya looked into them briefly; eye contact was no easier when the conversation was mostly telepathic- didn’t seem to be any one color. They looked black at first, but then some light was reflected in them and they looked dark, iridescent green. When she blinked, she found that they had changed to a deep black-purple, like wine or very old blood. She wondered if those eyes had any color at all, or if the colors were something her mind was adding, maybe to cope with the existence of a darkness so complete.

      She glanced at Cody. In a way that went beyond what her old resource classroom instructor had called “nonverbal cues,” she understood that Cody had also noticed the teeth and the eyes, and that he had seen them in action. And she understood that there was nothing any of them- not even Master Bane and the other New Sith- could do to stop the First One from doing whatever she wanted to them, and that therefore, it was best to stay calm and to tell Master Bane what the First One wanted. “I’ll go and tell her,” she said aloud, and took a deep breath. “But Cody has to come with me…in case I get lost on the way back.” Sensing that this obvious lie was not fooling anyone, she murmured, “I’m sorry, Master. But I won’t leave him.”

      She felt Cody tense up beside her, clearly sharing her expectation that Bane the First would decide to dismember them both on the spot. For a few moments, the only sounds Gaya heard were the blood pounding in her ears and the distant _drip_ of some underground spigot somewhere in the cavern.

      She looked up at Bane the First. The woman was smiling at them again.


	13. The Date

       Commander and Jedi Master Luke Skywalker straightened up as he heard the sound of footsteps walking to the door. Belatedly, he wondered if the zipper on his pants was undone.

      One of the newer apprentices, a suave-looking teenage boy, opened the door and stood in the doorway with a disinterested air. “Look, man, we’re the New Sith.”

      “Um, yes. I know.”

      “Meaning we already have a religion. So you can just take whatever flimsiplast you’re going to hand me about the Cosmic Being or that Director guy the Lucasites believe in or whatever and you can shove it up your-“

      “ _Chad!”_ The apprentice’s head jerked forward as the back of it was slapped hard by Darth Witicca. “You idiot, he’s no religious wacko, this is Commander Skywalker.”

      The boy’s jaded- and somewhat pained, because of the slap upside the head- expression slipped as he gaped at Luke. “ _What?!_ Oh my god, man, I’m so sorry-“

       “Yeah, you will be once I tell Master Bane,” Witicca cut him off. “Get your ass inside and help Jaina and Torturian clean up dinner. I’ll deal with you later.” To Luke, he nodded pleasantly. “Sorry about him. Born with a solid platinum spoon in his mouth, and now we’re giving him Force training. Hell of a combination, right? Anyway, Bane will be ready in a few minutes. You can wait inside.”

      From the lumpy, probably secondhand couch where he was perched, in the dark, den-like area near the cavernous kitchen, which seemed to function as a general “man-cave” area for the masters, Luke looked at the New Sith Order, and the New Sith Order looked back at him. Jaina and Witicca gave him friendly smiles, Apathian glowered (although, to be fair, Luke had heard that Darth Apathian did not approve of anything very much), and most of the masters and older apprentices (those who’d chosen their Sith names already), plus Chad, were smirking at each other or at him. There seemed to be a communal joke going on, which he was not privy to, and was probably the butt of.

      At last, one of them- Darth Torturian, possibly; the young man wore cheap synthetic leather pants, man-jewelry, and way too much hair product- asked bluntly, “Are you and Master Bane gonna bang each other?”

      “Uh…” The one thing Luke had never expected to discuss with a Sith was his love life. “No,” he replied after mentally getting his bearings. “This is a…professional meeting on neutral turf. Nobody has been more adamant about that than your master.”

      “That’s right,” Bane intoned, coming down the stairwell behind them, her voice projecting ahead of her. Luke started, and hoped she didn’t notice. She was wearing a dark red and black dress that was totally different- and involved much less fabric- than anything he had ever seen her in before, plus a pair of very tight, very high-heeled black boots that had definitely not been made by Sand People. She was also wearing enough silver Tusken jewelry to melt down and plate a small cruiser with. Her eye makeup was just as thick as usual, but, Luke felt, more carefully applied.

      “This,” announced Darth Bane emphatically, “is definitely _not_ a date.”

 

          “I don’t think I believe you,” he said later. He looked down into his drink as he said it, realizing it was a remark likely to be perceived as confrontational. It had occurred to him that Darth Bane thrived on confrontation the way most people thrived on oxygen.

       So far tonight, she had gotten plenty. The restaurant he had scheduled them at was new and upscale, just off the Lipartian way, and according to Bane, it was strictly for yuppies and the nouveau rich. The restaurant, for its part, seemed to reciprocate her feelings. The tall, slender hostess in perfectly blended makeup had smiled coyly at Luke, but had looked Bane over with a quizzical eye. As she showed them to their table after dithering over their possibly lost reservation, Bane had bent close and hissed, in a stage whisper (she did not seem to do anything quietly), “What a bitch. Probably thinks anyone not wearing designer crap shouldn’t be allowed in. And I hope she doesn’t turn sideways, or we’ll lose sight of her and never find the table.”

       The Sith Lady’s mood had only soured further when she learned that White Banthas were not on the cocktail drinks menu. Now she was nursing a half-glass of wine as if she had a grudge against it, and glaring at him. “Why the hell would I lie about it? Do you think it’s helping my Order’s credibility, to go to the Senate and go, ‘oh yeah, we found a flesh-eating vampire Sith ghost on Anzat, and now she’s going to be staying in our basement’? How the hell would that as a lie help us in any way?”

      “It’s not that I don’t believe you, exactly,” said Luke in what he hoped was a placating tone. “But Bane, I’ve done my own research on this. I mean, do you think after my father…do you think I’m not interested in what happens after we die? But all the Jedi sources I’ve heard say that there is a very specific skill to keeping one’s consciousness intact after death, and it doesn’t involve…consumption of anything.” He paused. “Besides…it involves the living Force.”

      “So because she’s a Sith, you think the living Force is…what? Off-limits?”

      “Well, how can you be focused on yourself and simultaneously on all life in the universe?”

      “Because I’m alive. So all life in the universe is connected to _me.”_ He looked up at her, taken aback. The answer came with almost none of her usual attitude- she had just rattled it off, as if for her it was knowledge so basic that she hardly ever thought about it.

     She shrugged at his reaction. “Well, it’s true. The living Force- all the Force, actually- it isn’t something outside us that we have to sacrifice our lives in service of. It’s something we already do serve, with every breath we take. And, apparently, beyond our last breath. The Force isn’t on the Jedi’s side, Skywalker, any more than it’s on the Sith’s side. The Force is life; it’s on everyone’s side. It doesn’t care what we do.”

      “Then why should it matter what we do?”

      “Because what we do affects other people.”

      “But if the Force doesn’t care about them, then why should we?”

     She laughed disbelievingly. “You mean you don’t _know?_ You actually need some grand metaphysical reason to care about other people?”

     Luke wanted to say, _of course not; that’s not what I meant._ But the words couldn’t organize themselves into a coherent phrase in his head. Instead, he said, “I never thought a Sith would lecture me about my lack of empathy.”

      “If you’d stop letting what Jedi party line you’ve been able to salvage from my father’s iconoclasm do your thinking for you, you’d understand that all this makes perfect sense.”

     “Well, apparently I _do_ do that, so please explain it to me.”

      She sat back. “The Sith have always ribbed the Jedi about doing things the same way for millions of years on end, no matter how redundant the policy gets. Now, that’s what the Sith are doing. If we’re going to survive, we have to either go back into hiding, which I doubt we can do because I don’t think the Jedi- namely you- are quite dumb enough to get fooled again, or…we have to make it so you can’t get rid of us. So you don’t even want to. We have to be…useful. We have to be something good in society.”

She shook her head. “I mean, you could kill us all now, but the thing is, you’ll always let one of us slip by. And then in another few hundred years, we’ll have another Jedi purge, but we’ll let one of you slip by accidentally, because that’s just how it goes, and then a millennium later we’ll be sitting here, talking this all out all over again. And each time, people will die and lives will be wasted and galactic society will come that much closer to total destruction, just so that a few men on either side can gratify- or preserve- their egos.”

      “So it’s better to abandon power than to have it at that cost.”

      “No. And you sound disapproving.”

     “No, just…surprised. So how will you get power now?”

      “We’ll get the non-political kind. We’ll study the Force. And as for the political kind…we’ll spread it around.” She smiled at him. “See, you’ve learned that power is like energy- once you lose it, you can’t get more, and what you lose is wasted. It’s not like that at all. When one person has less power, everyone has more.”

      “Some people are more powerful than others. That’s a basic fact. And it’s up to those people to-“

      “ _Is_ it a fact? Are all the powerful people you’ve ever known Force-users? And how can you know who the Force-users are? Now that we’ve seen the tests are flawed, however minutely, I don’t think you can.” She sipped the wine and made a face at its apparent bitterness. “The line is thin, Skywalker. That’s the thing I love most about this transition back to Republicanism. All the lines are getting thin. Between rulers and subjects, powerful and powerless, known and unknown, fact and myth, light and darkness, good and evil, even healthy and sick…do you remember that girl with the Krandyn’s I was talking to Leia about that day? She found that Cody boy, the clone. And she and Cody talked Bane the First into coming quietly. A deficient clone and a disabled girl. And half the time, Bane the First’ll only talk to them.”

      “I still don’t understand what this Darth Bane the First has to do with the Jedi Temple, and with the clone-“

       “It’s not that complicated,” she said impatiently. “Sidious- and probably generations of Sith before him- had been finding her victims to sustain her corporeal existence- she maintains her consciousness through her own power, but she needs blood and living tissue to take physical form. As for motivation, I would guess they were awed by her, and probably afraid of her, too. Cody was a wreck when I first talked to him about her. But she’d taken up residence in the Temple- probably because it’s become a center of the Force- and Sidious was bringing her deficient troopers, people on death row, political rivals. She killed the two troopers with Cody, but not him because she sensed his Force abilities-“

      “Which it shouldn’t be possible for him to have-“

     “Yeah, but he does have them. Hell, it’s impossible that there should be any serious variation in clones’ personalities and physiology at all, but it happens all the time. According to Cody, there’s been at least one with severe Krandyn’s Disorder, too. Now let me finish. She sensed his talents, and took him on as this kind of servant-apprentice thing, until we found him. She has multiple lairs on planets like Anzat and Tatooine, where there were local people with mythologies she could adapt to suit her needs. She probably has a lair of some kind of Korriban, too. That’s basically the Sith homeworld.”

     “And now she has one in your basement.”

     “We felt it would be best. We can keep an eye on her. And she might enjoy being around us, which could make her less homicidal, and she might have things to teach the apprentices. We’ll see.”

      “Can I meet her?”

     “If she’ll see you. We’ll raise it with her. She doesn’t like being disturbed, but I think we can persuade her to meet you and Leia.”

     “Thank you.”

Luke fidgeted, and she saw. “What the hell’s wrong now?”

     “Nothing. I had a question.”

     “Okay.”

     “Did Vader ever mention me or our mother to you?” It shot out of him so rapidly that he suddenly realized how much he had been wondering about it.

      The dull roar of restaurant sounds seemed to fade around them. Bane looked down at her lap. “Just a few times. He thought you were dead. It’s… actually why he and I were so close, I think. One of the reasons, anyway.”

      Luke looked down, too, into his drink. Then he asked, “What was it like, having him for a father?”

     “He was a good man. Nobody believes me when I say that, but it’s true.” She looked up at him, all traces of laughter and even irony gone from her face. Instead, there was grief, like an exposed wound. “ _You_ didn’t believe me when I said it. When we first met, right before Endor.”

     _I should have tried harder to believe it._ Aloud, he said, “Actually, I didn’t mean…my father. I meant…yours.”

      “What was it like being the daughter of Emperor Palpatine?”

      “Yes.”

      “Crappy.” She seemed glad of the change in subject. “I had no actual power because he never named me as his heir. He uprooted me from my Tribe, and pretty clearly never gave a damn about my well-being. For a while, he used me to project this media image of himself as a father…a sentimental man. But then adolescence hit me like a ton of duracrete and I got too sarcastic. So he started sending me off to all these prep schools, which was how I met your sister, and eventually…I was able to get out. I faked my death; Dack and Leia helped. As far as Palpatine was concerned I was legally dead, and so no longer his problem, and so I went back home, visited my family, and found the New Sith Guild…I always felt bad about leaving Lord Vader behind. But he once told me he wanted me to get out. Away from Palpatine. He was under his thumb, but he still knew what that guy had done. A lot of people knew.”

      During the lull in the conversation, their food came. Luke reflected that Bane looked somehow softer and almost totally sane in the warm golden light of the restaurant booth. As she cut up her food, her bangles and wristbands clanked together gently; her shoulder-length earrings made faint clinking sounds. Her movements were surprisingly graceful and deft, and for a moment, he could see her as a royal in an Emperor’s court.

      “How is your brother?” he asked. “Triclops?”

     “He’s all right. The new medication seems to be working well, but, you know, that’s what we thought about the last stuff.” She shook her head, causing her earrings to clink more insistently. “And I told him he’s got to change his name to something that doesn’t sound like a monster from a Dathomirian folk legend, but he hasn’t gotten around to it yet. And of course the facility is pitching all sorts of fits over it, because they’ll have to alter all the paperwork in his file to whatever his new name will be.” She paused and then remarked, “You should bother Ken to get down there and visit him. He says he hasn’t seen him in two months.”

     “Maybe his sense of time is just-“

     “No, his sense of time has always been totally unaffected by…whatever he has. And I checked the visitor’s log, anyway, and he’s right.” Her white nostrils flared angrily. “You know, I understand now why Gaya Viviani’s parents were so paranoid when they told me about the Krandyn’s. Once you label someone, it’s like they cease to be an actual person, an adult, an _equal_. To the system…to other people…they become this kind of…perpetual _child_. Not trusted, or believed.” She was glaring at him again. “My brother has a _mental illness_ , but he’s still a grown man. And a _father_. He deserves to see his son.”

      Luke tried again to say something to soothe her temper. “I know that, Bane, of course I know. I’ll talk to Ken about it. And I don’t think your brother is a _child_ just because he’s _sick_.” He paused to swallow a bite. “And by the way, if I understand Krandyn’s Disorder correctly, there’s a world of difference between what Gaya Viviani has and what your brother’s issues are.”

      “Only in a medical sense,” she snapped, and they didn’t speak again until the walk back to the Corridor. Although he didn’t understand what she meant, he didn’t press her further.


	14. The Beginning

        When Bane and the apprentices had arrived back on Coruscant, Gaya had felt incredibly tired. What she really wanted was to go home, to see Ardan and Niama, to sleep in her own bed, at least for one night. Instead, things seemed to have intensified. They had had to present their discovery of Bane the First to a committee of New Republic senators, first of all, only a few hours after touching down. They hadn’t had time to sleep, much less shower or change. Bane did most of the talking, irritably, which seemed to shock the representatives into a mollified silence that satisfied Gaya deeply, even through her haze of exhaustion and social overwhelming. She and Cody had both been called on to answer some questions, but generally, whenever possible Gaya had maneuvered herself to the back of the group, and tried to project an aura of invisibility. Bane the First had refused to leave the basement room she had taken up residence in, causing most of the senators to come away looking skeptical. Only Commander Skywalker, Gaya thought, who had been standing at the back of the conference room listening in silence, seemed to believe them, somewhat reluctantly.

        Then, they had gone back to the Temple. Gaya hadn’t raised the idea of visiting home; she didn’t want to look like special arrangements were being made for her- they were, but she didn’t need to make it obvious. Bane had seemed to understand, though- after the apprentices had eaten and showered, when most were getting ready to go to bed, she had allowed Gaya to call her parents. Looking back at that time, Gaya’s eyes still teared up slightly when she remembered the feeling of seeing their faces and hearing their voices.

         “I’m fine, yeah, this isn’t an emergency,” she’d assured them. “I just wanted to say I was back, and I missed you guys.”

         Niama smiled consolingly. “Ohhhh. We miss you, too, honey.”

         “How was Anzat?” asked Ardan. He smiled. “How did you like traveling offplanet?”

         “It’s not bad.” Actually, that was true- at the time, it had been stressful, but looking back, it had been exciting, too. “Anzat’s okay. The air smelled really weird, though, and it was…thick.”

         “Humidity,” Ardan explained. “Not so common here, although of course the air does contain moisture.”

        “Yep. And that smell is what they call fresh air,” Niama laughed. “Or so I hear.”

       Gaya nodded. She didn’t know much about Ardan’s past, but she felt it had involved some travel. Her mother, though, had never been offplanet. Had never even been to the Capital district of Coruscant. Gaya vowed that one day she would take her mother with her on a trip offworld, but she knew that vow ultimately amounted to a hope that she’d someday be able to.

       “Perhaps you’ll go to Korriban next, since they claim to be Sith,” Ardan mused. “You’ll have to take plenty of images of that. They have some of the oldest ruins in the known galaxy there, and most of the famous Sith Lords are buried there. It’s quite a sight- or so I’ve read.”

       “Have you made any new friends?” asked Niama innocently.

       Gaya had forgotten about being tired and overwhelmed. Up until that question. She considered lying and claiming that she was, that she had a circle of friends she fit right into. And it wouldn’t be a total lie, because Jaina, Ranjana, and now Linxo of the Vetala and sometimes Cody had started getting together into a social group, and Gaya did eat with them. But she didn’t know if they were friends yet. She had been focused on the mission and her studies and hadn’t given much energy or thought to social interaction. Besides, she was scared of them- their rejection, or worse, their exploitation of her vulnerable position for their own amusement- and she knew it. She knew she’d have to get past it. But surely there were more important things to put effort into?

       “No, Mom,” she said wearily. “I’m done worrying about that crap. If it happens, it’ll happen. I’m tired of putting myself through the anxiety about it. About whether or not I have as many friends as someone without KD. About whether I measure up.” Niama looked like she wanted to argue, but Ardan laid a hand on her arm.

       “I love you, guys. I love you, Mom.” She would feel arbitrarily guilty for her shortness with Niama, who was only concerned, but despite that Gaya didn’t feel she’d necessarily done anything wrong.

She was almost sixteen, older than all the junior apprentices except Ranjana, and it was time she was allowed to run her own social life. Her mother had done it when she was young, organizing play-dates with other mothers from the block or her pre-elementary program. Then, the schools had tried to do it, with painfully out-of-date social skills therapy and even forced “friendship groups” interacting during lunchtime.

Gaya could believe her mother was motivated by love, but the school was just trying to make sure she could pass for non-KD, to sand her down into the round peg they needed for their round hole. That was what most of it was about, she felt, from her social skills to her grades to her phys-ed competence to her weight. Even to her midi-chlorian levels. Measuring up to all the “normal people” in the galaxy. Well, now she was a New Sith, and New Sith didn’t have to be normal. To be a Jedi was normal, and the Sith were the opposite of the Jedi. It was a strangely comforting thought.

        Her days became a comfortable if tedious routine as the Senate lost interest in Bane the First. Gaya woke up, dressed, ate her meals in the kitchen with the other apprentices- the masters ate in a long, folding table set up in the den- and went to class. Most of them were going well, and her grades were higher than they had been at her old school, although she thought this might have been due more to the more nuanced, individual, even arbitrary grading systems most masters used in the absence of formal marking procedures. The exception was phys-ed. Apathian seemed to dislike her at least as much as her old instructor had; the only difference was that Jaina stuck up for her, and that the material- the martial art Teras Kasi, some basic sparring, and physical conditioning- was more interesting and seemed to have more purpose than endless games of scramball.

         She heard a knock on her bedroom door. She had gone upstairs early, fibbing about having unfinished homework. She thought Jaina could tell she was lying. She decided she’d explain soon to Jaina that she did want to hang out with her and the others, it was just she sometimes needed time alone, too. She didn’t want them to think she was avoiding them. People never seemed to understand that a person just might need time to herself; they tended to get offended. Or maybe other people didn’t need it the same way she did. That was probably it.

        She opened the door and found herself looking at Cody’s chest. She peered up at into his face. “Um, hi, Cody.”

        “Hey.” He cleared his throat and shifted. “Look…can I come in?”

        “Okay.” She let him by her and waited as he sat down awkwardly on the bed.

        Finally, he said, “I just wanted to say…you were really…good down there in the cave.”

        “I’m sorry I barged in. I was worried, and a little lost.”

       “It’s okay. I was scared she’d hurt you. But she seems to be…okay with you. The way she was with me when Palpatine brought me to her.” He shifted. “Anyway, I’m sorry if I seemed mad at you down there. You handled yourself really well. I’m glad it was you that found me. If it was Master Bane or that Solo girl, they probably would’ve started a problem.” He grimaced. “Or that Chad kid.”

       Gaya couldn’t help laughing. “I’d pay money to see what would happen if Chad walked in on…her. Bane the First.”

       “That’s horrible.” But she could tell he agreed and was trying not to smile.

       “So,” he said at last. “Master Bane says I can have a key to the workout room, so I can go there when I have free time. My unit used to work out together. She said that if you ever wanted to do some extra physical stuff to practice for class, you could use the key too. So I just thought I’d come up and let you know.”

        “Thanks.” She could do that, at least one day a week. She could find a way to drag herself to the workout room that doubled as the gym, despite the bad memories contained there, and just build muscle on some of the old weight machines. It would just be her and Cody; Apathian and Chad wouldn’t be there to criticize or tease. She didn’t have to reach a goal; she just had to go. She could do that.

        Her fingers flew to Ardan’s chain. She had found it in his things shortly after he had moved in with her and Niama, all those years ago. It was a thin metal chain, long enough to go around her neck twice, and from it hung a small, round silver pendant with what looked like some kind of family crest, and some letters that Gaya couldn’t read. It almost looked like an old-fashioned coin, but she knew it wasn’t. Ardan had given it to her when she’d shown interest, and now, she wore it most of the time, tucked under her collar by habit so no one would try to snatch it.

         The chain made her think of her parents, but especially Ardan. As she touched it and reveled in Cody’s compliment- for once, someone had been glad to have _her_ there, instead of someone smoother, less awkward, or prettier- she knew that she could do this. The workout room, but also this place- the New Sith Temple- in general. She wasn’t going to fail, and she wasn’t going to run away like she had at her old school. It didn’t matter what they did. Gaya knew she was there to stay.

* * *

THE END OF PART I OF THE STORY

STAY TUNED FOR PART II


	15. (Part II) Prologue: 17 Years Ago

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 1 of Part II
> 
> Starts with a flashback

         On the evening of the third day, she smiled at him as she brought him tea- the same cheap, synthetic stuff as she had made for them that morning, but a fresh pot, he could taste it. He wished, later, that she hadn’t smiled; that she didn’t smile at him so often, or so prettily, or with such genuine compassion. When had anyone last smiled at him and _meant_ it?

          Of course, in the course of those three days and nights he had come to wish many things, a useless indulgence he would not have allowed himself in what he already thought of as his “other life.” But here, he was lying in a lumpy, old bed in the backroom of a hole-in-the-wall flat, waiting for his unexpectedly brittle body to heal, and he had nothing to do but think- and sometimes read- but mainly think. Which brought on the ineffectual wishing.

         He wished that someone else had found him. He wished that instead of her, it had been some complete degenerate- much like the one that had knifed him without, of course, realizing who he was- who had taken him out of the alley where he had lay, humiliated and, of course, also bleeding. If only it had been some media caricature of a twilighter, some disgusting old whore wallowing in her own filth. Better yet, he wished that the mugger- _he_ had nearly been done in by a _mugger!_ \- had slashed some other part of his body than his throat, which he had done so ineptly that he had completely missed the jugular, scarring the vocal cords instead. Then he would be able to speak understandably and would tell whoever found him who he was. And perhaps they wouldn’t believe him, but at least then the normal dynamic could be restored between them. Then, even if it still had been this girl, this Niama, who found him, he could have revealed himself to her. Then, she could have been like all the rest of them- awed, cowed, obsequious perhaps (although he hoped not, for that would be a true disappointment), and secretly revolted.

       Then, she might not smile so much.

       He also wished she didn’t have those damn _books._ Most of them were the modern nano-discs, of course, not like the physical books, the codex-style tomes his master had collected. All but two, in fact. One of the two was a well-read thing on cheap flimsiplast, a romance penny dreadful, some blather about an alien princess trapped in a space station by pirates. It was mostly melodrama and sex, but when he read it- he was so bored he read them all- he detected a certain sadness in the tale. The events, though absurd, were communicated with an emotional depth that could cut as deeply as the knife had. He understood why she loved the book, especially after he learned about the death sticks and the pimp. She was the princess; she couldn’t go home, and she was waiting in this slum to be rescued. But this was no novel- they both knew the rescue wouldn’t come.

        But even understanding that, it might have yet been all right if only she hadn’t had the other codex-book. She handed it to him one night before she went to work. “I’ve read it a million times,” she’d said graciously. “You seem…intellectual. You probably need something to read that doesn’t kill your brain cells with all that romance sucrose.” She seemed to perceive his unspoken question. “I don’t know if I understand it. I didn’t get far enough in school to read it for class, and I’ve heard it’s a really deep book. But my mother always used to say it was the greatest poetry ever written, and the most romantic book ever.” He had read the cover, and felt genuine surprise. It was Kamus’ Ten Thousand Years of Darkness. _Your mother was right,_ he imagined saying- damn those vocal cords!

         But when he stopped wishing and fantasizing- his fantasies in that bed were the stuff of awful novels like the one about the princess; he nearly made himself sick- he realized it could not have been otherwise; as soon as he met her, it was too late. It wasn’t just the books. It had started when first he had opened his eyes and saw her peering down at him. The slender form, the majestic neck, and the sweet young face, tired and prematurely worn from drug use, too little sleep, and sorrow. The halo of dark hair, catching the crude fluorescent light in places and glittering faintly. The hazel eyes, so vivacious but so afraid, not yet dead-looking, as so many of her colleagues’ eyes were. And the smooth, pliant skin that was the rich color of bronze. In the dimmed lamplight, she had seemed to glow, surrounded by a sort of corona. He had always been gifted with sensory sensitivity, and in his time he had found that most beings stank, that they exuded an unwashed, waste-like odor. She did not, not even beneath the cheap, pungently alcoholic perfume she wore.

          He was glad when he learned what her profession was, because it meant that he could hire her some evening, when he was healed and back and this part of his life was over. He wondered if she would remember him, and fancied she might. He imagined giving her another dress to wear, instead of that awful, neon spandex thing she wore out at night, and what she would look like if she washed off the cheap makeup, as well as the perfume. He imagined giving her a good meal, and maybe even allowing Ten Thousand Years of Darkness to be performed again at the Opera House, just so she could see it.

          Thus ran his fantasies until that night, when he sat up to take the tea, and his eye was caught by the horrifying image across from him. It stared at him with red eyes sunken deep in sockets of yellow skin. All its skin was sallow white-yellow, like pus or melted candle wax. It hung on the thing’s skull in furrowed, wrinkly layers. It had no hair- not anymore- and its teeth were stumpy and gray in its sneering, pale-lipped mouth.

          He jumped and for a moment, his only thought was, _Dear Force, what is that thing?_

           It was then that he realized the image was surrounded by a rectangular frame, and he understood that he was staring, with revolted fascination, into a mirror.

           He knew then that he was not going to hire her. What was the point? He would know how she felt, would know that she felt nothing but the same revulsion he was feeling, no matter what she would say on such an evening. Even her smiles would be hollow, as hollow as the fawning looks the rest of them gave. And somehow, that thought also cut him. Besides, what a poor reward it would be for all she had done.

            But he did want her. He had in a sense been two people for most of his adult life, and they were quite different, so much so that if they were two separate men, they would probably despise each other. But they were both accustomed to getting what they wanted. It was only a question of how.

           Sometimes, as he healed and grew more lucid, he heard her crying. Sometimes, it was after she had been using- he could smell the fumes in the air. The other time, it was after the male had come to the flat, had damn near broken down the door. That day, he had heard the sounds of things crashing, breaking- and she had screamed, and then cried for a while. And he understood in his intellectual way that it was more than the pimp, more than the drugs- it was everything. The disappointment in herself, and the loneliness. He knew she could never have been a great scholar, captain of industry, or galactic leader- as surely she did, too- but she could be more than _this_ , and he knew she hated that she wasn’t.

          And she needed someone to love, who would also love her. Many beings needed that; until he had met her, he hadn’t really understood why. In many ways he still didn’t, although he no longer looked down so much on those who had the need. But that was what the drugs were for, that was what the awful novels and the Kamus epic were for. The inescapable loneliness.

          That realization made him happy, truly happy, when he had it. Because now he knew what he would do for her. Now he knew what he could give her that would also give him what he wanted. He would give her a chance- a chance to get clean, and a chance to have someone to love.

          That night he slept well, less fitfully than he had in a very long time. He had a plan. He always felt better when he had a plan.


	16. One Year Ago

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flashback cycling back to a few hours or so before the story begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: contains two ableist slurs.

         Niama Viviani looked up rather guiltily as the apartment door’s locks unbolted and the door slid open with a metallic screech. She had been working on another one of the novels she sometimes ghostwrote for various deceased celebrity writers whose publishers wanted to continue their franchises. It paid good money that was always useful to have for unexpected expenses or small day-trips to other sectors of Coruscant. Her daughter, Gaya, liked to help edit the manuscripts, even though she claimed they were “chick lit,” and Gaya’s stepfather, Niama’s husband Ardan Teta, was completely supportive. But the writing was so much fun- creating eccentric new characters and inventing the absurd and wildly melodramatic storylines, in particular- that Niama always felt that she was wasting time when she did it, especially when she knew that she should have been polishing glasses down in the bar or counting up last night’s profits.

         Looking up now from the datapad, she saw Gaya shuffle through the door, followed by Ardan. “Gaya?” Niama’s eyebrows rose. “What are you doing home from school?”

         Fifteen-year-old Gaya stood before her mother in silence for a few seconds, as if waiting for a bolt from above to strike her down. After a moment, she didn’t seem to be able to stand the anticipation any longer, and ran to the refresher, where, a few seconds later, Niama heard through the open door the sounds of her daughter being physically sick.

         She looked up at Ardan. “What’s wrong with Gaya? Is she sick?” Well, obviously she was. But something was different. Gaya had gotten sick and had to come home from school early before, like every child, and she had never before looked so terrified…of _Niama._ And Ardan, always a fair-skinned man, was now white as a new sheet, with a strange electricity to his movement that was almost tangible, and that made Niama, for reasons she didn’t understand, a little afraid of him.

        Gaya didn’t just have a bug. Something was very wrong.

        He paced for a minute, his pale hands clenching and unclenching themselves. At last, he sat down beside her at the kitchen table. “Gaya is not going back to that…school.”

        “What the hell do you- Ardan, how can you say that, of course she has to-“ His look silenced her at once. She waited, and, collecting himself, he began to explain.

        He told her how when he’d come, Gaya was already in the infirmary. They had taken her to the principal’s office originally, but she had been so panicked that she had tried to leave the school on the pretext of going to the refresher. She had struggled so much that it had been decided- the principal had been very careful not to lay blame on any one individual, in case Ardan sued, or tried to kill, the person who had made the decision to restrain his stepdaughter by force.

        “I came in and there she was,” he recalled in a distant voice as cold as space. “They had strapped her to one of the cots. The nurse told me they used the restraints they use on the cognitively challenged students. The students with special needs.” Niama reflected that she hadn’t known that the school was allowed to restrain any of its students.

        “I don’t care what she did to those two idiots who were harassing her in phys ed,” he growled, hands gripping each other until his knuckles were white. “I don’t give a damn about their ridiculous school policies or whether she was ‘disrupting’ anything. She was terrified that they were going to expel her, and terrified of what you’d do when you found out what she did. And instead of comforting her, they treated her like a criminal.”

        “They restrained her…” It wasn’t the most intelligent reply, but Niama couldn’t get the image out of her mind. She felt pity for her daughter, and she very much shared Ardan’s feelings toward the school administration. She felt as though she had been cheated, and Gaya too, moreso than her. When Gaya was enrolled in public school in first grade, they had made it clear that even though Gaya had the diagnosis of Krandyn’s Disorder (a sensory and developmental disorder even more unknown then than it was now) she was cognitively normal- possibly even more intelligent than her peers; Ardan had always thought so. Still, she had some needs, and they were trusting the school to meet them. And they had told Gaya that as long as she worked hard to get an education, and to learn the social skills that were so difficult for those with Krandyn’s, everything would be all right. Now, Niama felt that the school had failed to protect Gaya, failed even to understand her, and on a deeper level, that it had ruined learning for Gaya, maybe permanently. After all, this was only the most extreme incident to happen since Gaya entered secondary school; it was far from the first. How much could one girl be expected to take?

        “They restrained her,” Ardan confirmed. “The girl is taking two honors courses and she maintains a 3.5 average. She’s never even had a detention before. And they restrained her. As if she was some kind of violent _moron_. One of the _retards_.”

        “Ardan, don’t talk like that, you know she hates it when people use those terms, and so do I-“

       _“Bloody damn, Niama, do you think they’d have felt they could tie her up if she didn’t have the Krandyn’s? It’s not the usual method of punishment, is it?”_

        Niama recoiled. Ardan rarely got angry- he was frequently frustrated and disdainful, even contemptuous, toward people who made his, Niama’s, and Gaya’s lives more complicated than they had to be. And he was even less frequently angry at one of them. Even now, she saw some color returning to his face as he regained control of his temper.

       “I’m sorry, Nia,” he murmured. “Forgive me. I’m not angry with you.”

       “I know, honey. I’m angry at them, too.” She tried to think of any way Gaya wouldn’t have to go back to that school. She had had Gaya tested for midi-chlorians a week ago, and the test had not yielded enough to qualify Gaya for admittance to the New Jedi Order. But considering what Ardan had said about what Gaya had done (namely, shot electricity from her fingertips at the two boys who had cornered her in phys ed, while the instructor was conveniently distracted), Niama thought the test might have been wrong…or else Gaya had some strange abilities unconnected to the Force, which seemed unlikely.

        Ardan was gazing in the direction of the refresher, where Gaya still knelt just out of view, catching her breath. Niama could still see his rage, now cooled, but present, subtle as a poisoned cup and durable as stone. She realized his lips were moving, and she strained to hear the words he was repeating to himself, like a mantra, or a spell.

“They are going to pay for this,” he was muttering. “They are all going to _pay_.”


	17. Epithets

         Darth Bane the Second gripped the hoverbus handhold and thought giddily, _I love the smell of new military intel in the morning._

         Bane had had many names in her cosmically brief life of thirty-five standard years. First, to her tribe of Tusken back on her homeworld of Tatooine, she had been Mearegeode Tharsdottir, or, “Meargeode, descendant of the Thar.” Then, when her biological father, a wrinkly old offworlder named Palpatine, sent his men to find her and bring her back to his court, her name had become the more “civilized” (which mainly meant “easier to pronounce”) and Basic-sounding “Mara-Jade.” She had chosen her Sith name, the name she primarily went by now, a few years later, her master Lord Vader being somewhat liberal in his attitude toward his apprentice, and besides this still being an apprentice Sith himself and not quite sure how to mentor anyone else in what he himself was not yet an expert in.

         Bane vaguely enjoyed collecting names the way some people collected vintage Jedi Clone War Hero action figures, ancient Sith tomes, or the bloody lightsaber hilts of their beaten foes. But there was one name she hoped not to collect- really, she supposed it was more like a title, or some kind of epithet perhaps- which was why she and the Jedi Master and New Republic Commander Luke Skywalker were taking public transportation to and from their early-morning meeting with Chancellor Organa, instead of Skywalker’s speeder. (Bane reflected that she wished they took the speeder more places. She had driven it twice, and it handled well and went faster than any other transport smaller than a fighter that she’d ever flown. She and Skywalker agreed that they would have to take it offplanet sometime, to a place with a lot of wide-open space, where they could really floor it.)

        The epithet she wanted to avoid- the one they both wanted her to avoid, just for now- was, “Darth Bane: that crazy ginger who Commander Skywalker is having a secret love affair with.” Although the media would find a more succinct way to put it. They’d call her the “Sith Slut” or “Tusken Tart,” something tasteful like that. If she was lucky, of course. If not, they’d be sure to add a few cracks about her weight, parentage, and of course the fact that she was affiliated with the order responsible for galactic despotism and mass Jedi slaughter.

        But right now, she felt too pumped to worry about any of that. “You should stay for breakfast at the Temple,” she told Skywalker with uncharacteristic cheerfulness, the bumpiness of the hoverbus ride only serving to feed her adrenaline high. “We can start planning how we’re going to do this. I can’t kriffing _wait_ to get out home and bust this guy’s ass. And I want to incorporate some of my tribe’s newest warrior generation in this. They never get to raid anything anymore; it’s a travesty.”

        He was looking at her, but his eyes were unfocused and she sensed he was lost in some reverie. When he noticed she’d stopped talking, he snapped out of it. “Sorry, Bane. I missed that. I guess I’m tired.”

        Bane tactfully refrained from making a crack about how it had probably been their antics last night in her quarters at the New Sith Temple that had worn him out. Instead she sat down beside him on one of the many vacant seats. “I was saying how you should come back to the Temple for breakfast.”

        “You guys eat Jedi for breakfast now? What, did you discover some ancient recipe in some holocron somewhere for Jedi omelets?” When Skywalker- all right, _Luke_ \- when _Luke_ was tired, his jokes tended to be of the corny pun variety. Actually, he was a little corny all the time. _Well,_ Bane thought smugly, _not quite all the time._

“Or did you just ask Bane the First what recipe she uses?” A more literal-minded person, such as Gaya Viviani, one of the second-year apprentices at the New Sith Temple, might here point out that Darth Bane the First, also known as “Bane the Conqueror,” “Bane, the Master of the Dark Side,” and a whole slew of other impressive-sounding epithets, didn’t have recipes for anyone, including Jedi. The undead Sith master, who had discovered a means of preserving both her consciousness and her corporeal existence through the occasional consumption of blood and/or other parts of the body, too, generally hadn’t bothered with niceties like cooking her victims, back when she’d had them. It was also not clear whether she was in fact literate, thus rendering written recipes useless. Currently, she had a lair in the basement of the New Sith Temple, where she had stayed since the New Sith Order’s discovery of her on Anzat, almost a year ago.

         “Ha ha,” said Bane the Second with gentle sarcasm, leaning back horizontally on the seat and lightly pulling Luke so that his head rested comfortably on her chest. “For your information, Mr. Grammar Expert, as of last night I have had all the delicious Jedi I will need for at least another- oh- couple of hours, at least.”

         “There could be reporters,” he said, but he was happy. He looked up at her, fixing her with the blue eyes that she liked to imagine Lord Vader had had, under his helmet. “Mara-“

        “Bane.”

        “Bane.” He took a deep breath. “You know how we’ve been…involved for…quite a few months now-“

       “Listen. I think I know what you’re going to say.” She shifted slightly, and grinned. “Look, I know how hard it is for you, even with all your wonderful Jedi restraint, to watch me living in a Temple that’s almost exclusively guys. And since I’m in charge there, I know it’s crossed your mind that maybe sometimes I… take advantage of my position. But I can’t move out. I can’t be the Master of the New Sith and not live at the New Sith Temple. Besides, even if I was remotely attracted to any of those jerks, which I’m not, I still wouldn’t do anything about it behind your back. I mean, I’ve been with all of, like, three guys in my whole life, and I think that’s including you. You’re the one who spent all that time ‘helping Leia out with diplomacy’ in all those systems, and we all know how many very nice young ladies you met. I mean, just considering the fact that your Order was originally celibate, and everything.”

        He laughed. “That’s not what I was going to say.”

        “Then what were you going to say?”

       He gazed at her a little more, this time as if he had a question that he wasn’t sure how to phrase. Finally, he seemed to give up, and asked, “So…can your tribe help us find this place…um… ‘Eidolon Base’?”


	18. Now

        Gaya Viviani closed her eyes. She did her best to ignore the tranquil meditation music playing on the somewhat tinny speakers in the room that was the New Sith Temple’s gym. She tried hard not even to smell anything, and she erased her Force perception as cleanly as if it was as simple as shutting an invisible third eye. She tried not even to think any thoughts with subjects more complex than her breathing patterns. She ignored the paranoid voice in her head that fretted that she would lose her balance if she stopped paying attention to her footing, even for a second.

        She tried to forget the passing of time, the memory of the pre-travel tasks she had completed and the anxiety over what still had to be done, and she especially tried to forget what she had mentally dubbed “the Ardan pain.” These things were, temporarily, not real.

        What was real was the cold linoleum floor beneath her bare feet, the drafty air saturated with traces of music that made it past her concentration, and most of all, the healthy ache of her rapidly learning muscles. She allowed herself only a vague awareness of the ease with which her body slid from movement to movement, position to position, across the floor, as she practiced almost effortlessly the teras kasi kata whose name she didn’t even remember. That was okay. Names weren’t always as important as neurotypicals- people without Krandyn’s Disorder, people who were normal- tended to think. Not when you had the Force.

        Bane the First had told her that; Gaya thought she was probably right. She knew the thing, and the essence of the thing. Names, to some extent all language, were just symbolic, a way of expressing the essence of a thing not present without describing it in detail. You didn’t need them as much if you could just transmit the knowledge of the thing directly to the person you were communicating with. That was fine by Gaya. Bane the First communicated almost exclusively by telepathy, and she had ruled the Sith for years with an iron fist; even as a spirit, she had exerted plenty of influence over modern Sith; even, it was suspected, Emperor Palpatine. Gaya hoped to learn telepathy at some point. Due to either her Krandyn’s or her quiet nature, whipped further into submission by its undermining through well-intentioned social therapy and bad-intentioned bullying and exclusion, she often spoke haltingly, inarticulately, in a too-quiet tone, and she often had to search for words mid-statement, since the anxiety of social interaction often caused her to forget what she had meant to say. Telepathy was going to change her life.

       The music went dead and Gaya completed the step and opened her eyes. In the doorway stood the figure of Darth Apathian, the phys-ed instructor and general teacher of all things physical at the Temple. He was, as usual, glaring at her. “You should be getting your crap together for the trip.”

       “I did already, Master.”

       “And it’s loaded onto the ship?”

       “No, but-“

      “Then get it on there. Sorry, but we don’t have housekeeping droids to do it for you.”

      Gaya frowned. Most people would, and did, assume that Apathian was just being surly, as he was with everyone. But she knew that this was the hassling he reserved just for her; he never talked to Jaina or any of the others this way. And he did this all the time with her. She was pretty certain at this point that he was messing with her. She wished she knew why. “I know there aren’t any housekeeping droids to do our chores for us, Master. I never expected there to be.”

       “Then go get your kriffing stuff.”

       The swearword seemed excessive. “I’m sorry, Master, it’s just that they said our bags didn’t have to be down there until-“

       “Well, I’m locking things up in here now, so you’ll have to get out anyway,” he snapped.

      Gaya sat down next to her boots and began to put them back on. Deciding that it had been a year, and she was tired of this, she said, in the least confrontational way she knew how, “You know, Master, the reason I come here is to get extra practice on the physical parts of the training. So I can do better in class.” An extreme lack of physical coordination was a common side effect of Krandyn’s Disorder. Using the Force to correct for this deficiency brought Gaya’s abilities up to about those of a typical, non-Force-sensitive being; to keep up in class and to build her strength, she found it was necessary to put in extra time in the Temple’s gym room, lifting weights or practicing sparring, either in teras kasi form or with a training saber.

       “And?” was his impatient reply.

       “Well, no offense, Master, but I know you never liked me. I mean, not that you have to _like_ me exactly…it’s just you seem to actually dislike me. And it always seemed to me like it was because you thought I wasn’t trying hard enough in class. So I guess I want you to know that I am now.”

       His red eyes fixed her with a look of supreme disdain that she would have had to have had severe KD (at least) not to pick up and comprehend. “So? Do you expect me to give you a medal for doing exactly what you should be- doing everything you can to learn these skills?”

       And he wasn’t wrong, Gaya mused an hour or so later, as she brought her things down to the waiting ship that would take their team, plus the team from the New Jedi, to Tatooine. She was unused to people expecting much from her- at her old school, before the Order, she had been labeled a “special needs student,” despite the advanced level of the courses she took, and because of her family’s financial situation, which was stable but never great, she had known that her formal education would end after secondary school graduation. But this was the New Sith Order, and it needed apprentices who could do things. Gaya tended to be good at anything involving other languages, such as translation, and lately she had realized an unexpected talent for psychological profiling. And of course her spatial reasoning was always above average, except when it related to her own body (she was and always would be anything but graceful). But she needed to have physical skills, too. And why should she expect the masters to hold her hand and reward her for every little thing she did right? She was sixteen years old now, after all.

       As the others had begun to board, Gaya selected a seat toward the back, near a viewport. Looking out, she realized someone had sat down next to her and hoped it wasn’t Chad Divinian, that creep. She grinned when she saw who it was. “Hi.”

      “Hey,” said her friend, probably her best friend, Jaina Solo. “How was your workout?”

      “I didn’t, um, really get to practice the whole kata. Master Apathian kicked me out.”

      “What? He knows you’re allowed to be in there.”

      “Yeah, but he said he was locking up.” Gaya sighed. “I wish…I wish Master Bane wasn’t making him come with us.”

      “Yeah. Do you see the looks he gives me and Linxo? The guy’s seriously anti-gay. I don’t know how he managed to work with Witicca all these years.” Gaya nodded, refraining from remarking that she, too, found Jaina and Linxo’s behavior mildly annoying- not because she had a problem with gayness or with homosexuality, but because it was awkward to be walking down the hall and come upon two of your friends passionately sucking face.

      “He hasn’t said anything about it, though? Like, to your mom?”

       “No. But I think he would if Aunt Bane let him.”

       “You could, you know, tell her first. Then he wouldn’t be able to bust you.”

      “Ha. There’s no way my mother is going to know about this. Not ‘til I’m old enough to move out of their house. I mean, first of all, it’s bad for her political career because about half her constituents think interspecies pairing is sick. And then second of all, they’re going to treat it like some phase I’m going through- the way they used to act about my being a New Sith. That’s basically what they say about things that I like and they don’t. They treat it like I only like it because I’m being a ‘rebellious teen.’ Even my Dad-“ She broke off suddenly and looked apologetic. “Sorry.”

      “What- oh. Yeah.” Gaya gave a mental groan. She hadn’t thought about her stepfather (ex-stepfather?) Ardan Teta for almost the whole day…until now. “That’s okay.”

       “Do…um…do the police have any new leads?” asked Jaina innocently, as if she didn’t know- or at least didn’t suspect- the answer.

       “No,” said Gaya heavily. She sighed. “He…covered his tracks really well, it looks like.”

       “Oh Gaya, look, I bet they’re not sure it wasn’t-“

      “Yeah. They’re pretty sure. I mean, that’s what they told us. That it probably wasn’t kidnapping. That he, um…that it was probably voluntary.”

     They were silent for a minute or two, and then Jaina said, “Well, he’s a kriff.”

     “He’s still my father. Basically. The closest thing I’ve got, I mean.”

      “Sorry. You’re right. Look…tell your mom when we get back, my mom wants to invite her over again sometime. She’s sorry for the whole ‘shopping trip’ thing-“

      “That’s okay, she didn’t know.” Chancellor Organa had invited Gaya’s mother Niama on a shopping trip with her and Master Bane. The expensive stores they had gone to had only served to intimidate Niama and to make her feel even more off-kilter, though she had accepted the women’s gesture with grace. “She says Master Bane comes into the Kimorra a lot and has a drink with her between rush hours. She likes that.”

      “Well, that’s good.” Jaina grinned. “Hey, have you brought Cody home to meet her yet?”

      “Um…we had him over for Life Day,” Gaya admitted. Her brow puckered. “Why?”

      “’Cause he likes you.”

      Gaya shook her head ruefully. “That’s not why I invited him. I wasn’t trying to…it wasn’t a romantic thing. It’s just that Mom and I felt bad for him because, you know, that’s a time for family, and his unit is, you know, off somewhere fighting for the Empire right now, and he can’t even contact them…we thought he might be lonely.” She paused and then added, “He doesn’t like me. Not like that. We’re just friends.” She tried not to sound sad about it. She wasn’t; not that much, anyway.

       “Ardan liked him,” she said at last, because she needed to talk about Ardan to someone. It wasn’t that her mother had ever said they couldn’t talk about him; Gaya knew she would try, so that Gaya could process her feelings about the disappearance; Niama had done the best she could to hold it together for her daughter. But when Gaya had last seen her mother, the woman had looked as if she’d cried herself to sleep for the past month. She wasn’t going to put her mother through a discussion of her own emotions, when her mother’s were still so raw.

       “I think it was because he knew how…hurt I’ve been that I…never dated anyone,” she elaborated. “I mean, all through secondary school everyone had at least one person interested in them. And it was only these short, two-week things, it wasn’t long or deep…but nobody ever asked me out. Not once. I used to get really sad about it. Ardan knew that. I mean, I know fathers are supposed to resent their daughters’ boyfriends because they think they’re not good enough, but I think he was so happy that I might finally be going out with someone that it canceled that out.”

        Jaina nodded, and then, after a few moments’ careful deliberation, said, “So…on a lighter note, you want to hear what happened the first time I ever dated?”

       Gaya perked up a little. “You brought a date home to your parents? I thought-“

      “No, my first time it was a human. Her name was Tareja. We were going to the eighth grade Life Day formal together. And my parents made us sit in the den for, like, an hour before we could go and my Mom was asking all these questions about her grades and her family, and my Dad was just looking really bewildered, because he feels weird about things like homosexuality. Because, you know, back when he used to be a smuggler sometimes he used to go to these spaceports with cantinas where there would be these raunchy shows with two women and-“ Jaina interrupted herself to yell to the front of the takeoff bay. “Hey, Uncle Luke!”

      “Hey, Jaina,” Commander Skywalker beamed down at his niece. “Hey, Gaya,” he added generously.

      “Um, hi,” Gaya greeted him with her usual aura of impenetrable self-confidence.

      Skywalker smiled kindly. “Master Bane tells me you’re putting in extra time at the fitness center over at you guys’ Temple. Great job. You look like you lost some weight.”

       Distantly, Gaya thought she could hear Chad snicker. Even as her face burned with embarrassment, though, she found herself brushing it off. She was used to some level of embarrassment, because of the misunderstandings her Krandyn’s caused. Besides, Jaina and Master Bane were both glaring at Skywalker. Bane, a tall and generously built woman herself, was giving Skywalker a look that could best be interpreted as, “If we were married, you’d be sleeping on the couch tonight for that.”

       Looking as close to Skywalker’s eyes as she could (the Krandyn’s made direct eye contact difficult) Gaya replied carefully, “I don’t know. I haven’t checked. But I can lift way heavier weights now, and my reaction time in sparring has gotten better.”

Gaya had been overweight when she came to the Temple, and she might still be, although her clothes had gotten looser. But Master Bane, who had been big her whole life, according to her, had told Gaya at the start: the best kind of inner power, contrary to the diet plans they advertised on the HoloNet, could be found in liking the way you looked, and trying to treat your body well. If Gaya lost weight by putting in the extra time, that was fine, but if not, that was fine, too. The important part was not getting thin, but getting strong. They were Sith, and Sith didn’t care how their bodies looked, because Sith didn’t have to please anyone. Sith only cared about what their bodies could _do_.

         She felt bad for Skywalker then- the man seemed chastened and honestly sorry to have offended her. After a moment of helpless floundering, he raised his voice and addressed the teams. “Hey…so we’re getting ready to-“ He was interrupted by Masters Bane and Witicca shushing both teams of apprentices, who were still talking loudly. Skywalker obligingly waited until everyone had quieted down before continuing.

          “So we’re getting ready to take off for Mos Eisley spaceport on Tatooine,” he announced. “The trip should take a little less than forty-eight hours, unless we have to avoid Imperials or stop for an emergency refuel. So I’d advise everyone to settle in for the long haul once we’ve jumped to lightspeed. Now, before you all plug into whatever entertainment gadgets you brought, I have some things to say about the place we’re headed.

         “A lot of our… _friends_ from the New Sith might think they’re old hats at this interplanetary travel thing because they went with Master Bane to Anzat last year. Well, I know Anzat has a spaceport and can be a little seedy at times- although you all were mostly out in the wilds of it- but believe me when I say: Tatooine is a whole new scramball game. So I want you all to observe the rules even more strictly. Don’t separate from your group, and don’t go anywhere alone. Keep all your credits and anything valuable you brought along somewhere close to your body. Don’t buy anything unless a master says it’s okay. Don’t accept anything from strangers, don’t pick fights, and don’t think you’re allowed to drink just because there’s no legal drinking age there. All of you are citizens of Coruscant, where there _is_ a legal limit, and you’re all under it except Ken and-“ he paused briefly, testing the unfamiliar name on his tongue- “Ranjana Tharsdottir. Oh, damn. Darth Scathach, I mean. Sorry, Lady Scathach,” he added to Ranjana, who was slouched impatiently in the seat next to Ken, who kept sneaking sidelong glances at her, as if the young Jedi Knight couldn’t believe his amazing luck. “I only got the memo a few days ago. Congratulations, though.” He and the masters clapped politely, and the New Sith apprentices joined in out of sentiment for Ranjana, who accepted the lukewarm affirmation with a gracious nod. Aside from Ken, who clapped enthusiastically, none of the Jedi apprentices clapped much; they mostly looked a little perplexed at the significance of the name change.

        “So anyway, don’t do anything over there you wouldn’t do over here,” Skywalker finished somewhat lamely. “To our Sith apprentices, I’m Master Skywalker.”

       Gaya couldn’t help herself. “As if everybody doesn’t already know who he is,” she whispered to Jaina, who snorted.

        “And to my young Jedi,” continued Skywalker, “This is Master Bane, Master Witicca, and Master Apathian. And I have word that Master- um- Bane the First…you see, this is Master Bane the Second,” he tried to explain to the even-more-puzzled Jedi apprentices. “The other Master Bane, Bane the First…she’ll meet us on-planet. She is, um, a very ancient and revered member of the Sith, so I will expect everyone to be on their best behavior for her. And I think that’s everything.”

       He looked around with the desperate cheer of a schoolteacher trying to interest small children with tiny attention spans in some new project. “May the Force be with us.”


	19. The Bright Planet

        The thing Gaya always noticed about the other planets she visited was the air- the way it smelled, the way it tasted in the back of her throat, and the way it felt in her lungs and against her skin. On Coruscant, she barely noticed the thin, chilly, usually dry air, which almost always smelled at least slightly of fuel exhaust, rotting garbage, and overcrowding. When she had traveled to Anzat, she had been shocked at the briskly cool, thick, foggy, moist air, which only smelled a little of decaying foliage and was mostly saturated with the fragrance of rain. She had suspected Tatooine would be very different because she knew the climate was much drier. But when she had to think about their arrival, somehow she could not separate the concept of a new planet from the memory of that strange, lovely air filling up her lungs, as if it was cleansing her inside.

        She stepped off the ship in Mos Eisley, and immediately fought the urge to dart back onboard. Even partly in the shade, as the hangar was, the dry heat was oppressive. But the heat was nothing compared to the light. She looked out beyond the hangar’s wide doors, through which the ship had flown, and for a moment she could have sworn that there was nothing out there but pure, white, empty space. After a few seconds of staring, during which she fully believed she would go blind the way you were supposed to when you stared directly at a sun, she realized that the fiery void was actually bright sunlight, brighter than she had ever seen, beating down onto the sand and being reflected back off the white mud-bricks that the buildings around them seemed to be constructed from. Still, Gaya couldn’t imagine walking out into that blaze.

        As she walked through the streets, holding onto Jaina’s pack at her friend’s own invitation so that she could keep her eyes mostly closed and use Jaina’s direction, and the Force, to guide her, Gaya felt as though raw chaos itself was assaulting her eardrums- and her nose, and her Force connection as well, she realized after a few minutes. Around her there were voices, speaking all manner of languages she could and couldn’t guess at- in that way, it was similar to Coruscant, which actually improved her mood. There were animal sounds and what could have been the auditory emissions of droids. The dry air was filled with the smell of fuel, beings, and organic waste, probably from animals. This was also similar to Coruscant, except for the animals. And she could feel the throbbing of life around her in the Force- overwhelming at first, but then exhilarating. At last, she was curious enough to open her eyes. After the initial blinding flash, she gaped happily at the fascinating, squat buildings like honeycombs, the kiosks, the strange beings, and the insentient creatures- these were the most thrilling, since there was no livestock on Coruscant, only one small collection of creatures in the zoo at the capitol.

        “Keep up, everybody!” yelled Master Bane over the melee. “We’re almost there!”

       “There” turned out to be a large but otherwise unremarkable cantina that Bane and Skywalker claimed was near the city limits. This was convenient, as tomorrow, they explained as the teams sat, waiting for dinner in one of the cantina’s back “banquet rooms,” they would ride a local shuttle up to Anchorhead, the last outpost of what most beings called “civilization.”

      “Beyond that, the Dune Sea begins,” Bane explained. “Aside from moisture farms, and there aren’t many of those left, there’s nothing but desert and indigenous tribes. My people are waiting for us a day or so from Anchorhead, about halfway between there and Althingard, our sacred caves. They’ll be sending a band of guides to lead us there. From their camp, we’ll coordinate with them and proceed to Eidolon Base. They’ve recently discovered some new caves that might allow us to travel most of the way underground.” She paused. “Speaking of underground caves, Master Bane the First will also be meeting us at Anchorhead. She believes she can be helpful in interrogating…whoever we find at the base.”

       “Who might we find?” asked Gaya.

       Bane and Skywalker shared a look of great apparent significance, which Gaya couldn’t interpret with certainty. Then, Skywalker said, “We’re not sure, Gaya. It’s an Imperial base, so it’s possible we’ll find officers who’ve been eluding New Republic capture. But we don’t know who exactly it’ll be. We just may need to interrogate them, for intel.”

       “Why didn’t we find the base sooner?” asked Jaina. To Gaya, it sounded like one of those questions people asked not because they didn’t know the answer, but because they wanted to hear what the person they were asking would say. “It’s both your home planets, and before they emigrated to Coruscant, the New Sith actually managed to wrestle planetary control away from the Hutts. But nobody knew about this base ‘til now.”

       Bane took a big swig of her drink. “I’m not going to answer your question, Jaina, because I’ve got a feeling you’re about to do it for me.” She looked up expectantly. “Well? Just speak your mind, young Solo. No one’s going to be able to say I don’t encourage independent critical thought in my Order.”

        Pursing her lips, Jaina pressed on. “Look, with respect, Master, you know that while Palpatine was in power, the local government of Tatooine was basically a puppet of the Imperials and the Hutts. That’s the way it was on most planets. But since the Empire lost control of the Rim systems, the New Republic stepped in and imposed the Freedom of Commerce Act-“

        “Tell us what that is, Jaina,” interjected Witicca. “In case anyone doesn’t know.”

        “The Empire regulated interplanetary commerce and corporate activity through a command market, where all companies were either nationalized or under Imperial supervision,” explained Jaina. “The Freedom of Commerce Act basically states that the government isn’t allowed to directly regulate economic activity anymore. Because of that Act, we now have almost totally unregulated free trade.” She grimaced slightly. “It wasn’t reported widely on the HoloNet. The Senate sort of tried to sneak it through.” She snorted. “They basically succeeded. All they have to do is throw the word ‘freedom’ into stuff, and people’s brains shut off.”

        “Anyway,” prompted Bane.

        “Yeah. So the thing is, while the Empire was in control, Tatooine had some protection from becoming companies’ dumping ground and factory floors. But now that this Act is in place, there’s no legal reason for big companies not to do things like dump their waste in the desert, or monopolize whole industries or local markets, or pay their factory workers almost nothing. Because it’s Tatooine, so no one is paying attention. No one is going to stop them.”

       Jaina leaned in. “What I think is that those companies decided they didn’t want any New Republic policymakers sniffing around down here. So they hid the existence of this base. For all we know, the base is providing them with troops to use as security against worker insurrection.”

       A brown-haired boy sitting with the New Jedi apprentices, who looked surprisingly similar to Jaina, sighed and rolled his eyes. Gaya recognized him as Jacen, Jaina’s twin brother. At the other end of the table, Chad Divinian sneered.

       “Please, Solo. Everybody knows that that Act is stimulating the galactic economy and providing jobs and all that stuff. The people who don’t think so are all bleeding hearts who don’t understand free market economics. My Dad says you have to give people incentives to work hard, otherwise they don’t. He says he worked his ass off at my age and he earned everything he’s got. Besides, your family’s rich too. If you don’t like the system, you should give away all your stuff and live on the street.”

       “You want to talk about earning what you have?” Jaina shot back. “Chad, you’ve never even had a job, unlike most of us, including me, for your information- yet you get to enjoy all your father’s wealth, and you’ll get even more as you get older.”

      “Jaina.” Jacen’s voice was as clipped and proper as Jaina’s was loud and insistent. “Even Mama supported that bill when it came to her. It’s all down to economics. You have to let the market regulate itself, and trust people to make their own choices and deal with the consequences. And I doubt that a corporation with an image to think of is going to risk angering the entire New Republic by committing treason, just so they can have some stormtroopers to break strikes with.”

       “Look, after the Act was passed, corporate stocks went up and factory construction increased by 50% in the Outer Rim alone,” argued Jaina. “So why didn’t we see the boom? Where’s the wealth? People around here look as poor as ever. And why didn’t we learn about the base sooner? Why hasn’t there been a new, duly elected leadership?”

       “Listen, everyone, we have to assume things will become clearer once we infiltrate,” Skywalker interrupted, in an effort to quell the argument. “If any corporate entities know we’re here, not that there’s necessarily any reason for them not to know, it’s not because the New Republic told them. We’ll go in surreptitiously, and hopefully we can take the base before word gets out to any reinforcements that might be waiting. Everything will become clearer once we get in and gather some intel.”

       As their dinner arrived, Gaya, who had been deep in thought, said, “Can I say something?”

       Bane smiled faintly. “About our earlier topic?”

       “Yes, Master.”

      “Considering your economic background, I think that would be highly beneficial.”

      Gaya looked up, and tried to look only at Bane, not at any of the other listeners, especially Chad and Jacen. “My Mom ran away from home when she was about my age. She never told me why, but I always figured there was a good reason, because no matter how bad things got, she never went back. She couldn’t find a job that paid her a living wage. She…she was a twilighter for a few years. For a while she had a drug problem. Until soon after she found out she was pregnant with me. That’s when…when she got all this money in the mail. Sent anonymously. She used it to buy off her pimp, and the rest she used to get clean and to live off of while she found a better job. She owns her own business now. She worked hard for it.

       “I understand that people have to have incentive to work hard, but motivation doesn’t work if there’s no way they can act on it. It’s not just about pressuring people to succeed, it’s about giving them the tools they need.” She looked down. “I just wanted to say that.”

       Slowly, the New Sith apprentice named Cody looked up from his plate. As a clone, originally created to be an Imperial trooper, he rarely got involved in ideological discussions; in fact, he typically did not speak unless it was necessary. Now, he, too, began to talk. “Gaya is right. Besides, I remember how men used to talk about Rim system assignments. They always felt that as defenders of the Empire, it was their job to protect Imperial civilians from outlaws. When they could. They tried to do the same here. Now that they’re not around, if these corporations are exerting control over citizens, there is no one to stop them.”

       “Now, hang on a minute there, that’s not what the Imperials-“ Skywalker began. Bane laid a restraining hand on his arm. The remainder of the meal was spent in silence.

* * *

       “Gaya!”

       Gaya awoke groggily from a dream she couldn’t quite recall but which had put her in a mournful frame of mind, and peered through the darkness. Vetala Linxo, who had been assigned to share the room with her, was shaking her. “Gaya, you have to come.”

       “What? I don’t…come where?”

       “Downstairs. Jaina has already gone. Chad Divinian snuck out of his room. Cody told us. He is downstairs in the bar now. He is drunk. Jaina says we have to keep him under control. We have to go down.”

       Gaya pulled on a jacket and her boots, and peered at the chrono. It was a few hours before dawn, so late it was early. “Okay,” she yawned, pocketing their com, the room key, and her traveler’s wallet, which she strapped around her hips under her pajamas. She saw Linxo grab their lightsabers as they headed out the door. Well, you could never be too careful.

       They made it to the cantina/inn’s ground floor just in time to see Jaina on her way out the door. Around them, the bar was still open, but sparsely populated. Few beings looked up as Gaya and Linxo ran into the room.

       “Hurry, guys! Follow me!” called Jaina. “Chad just slurred something about finding twilighters and ran out! Cody’s trying to run him down now!” She ran out the door, too, and the two other girls took off after her, into the Tatooine night.

       “Damn,” Gaya panted to Linxo as they followed Jaina into a sidestreet. “I thought drunk people were supposed to be _slow_.” She shook her head as Linxo laughed nervously. “We should’ve left a note saying what was going on. The masters are going to kill us.”

       “I hope not,” replied Linxo. “But…what if they cannot find us?”

       “They’ll look,” assured Gaya, but she wasn’t sure. After all, it was primarily a mission, not a field trip, and it probably couldn’t be delayed for wayward apprentices. _Calm down. It’s not even been an hour since Linxo came and got you. They’re probably not even awake yet._ She glanced up at the street ahead. Jaina had stopped in her tracks. She was staring into the dark. “What is it?” Gaya asked her.

       “I don’t know,” Jaina murmured. “I’ve lost Cody’s trail. But it’s worse…I’m getting a feeling…”

       “What do you mean?”

       “Don’t you have it too? Just a general, you know, really bad feeling about this?” Gaya thought about it, and found herself nodding.

       Someone- or something- tapped both girls and they turned quickly, stifling yells. It was Linxo. Her almond eyes were vaguely luminous, translucent in the dark. They were wide with unease. “Quickly- be quiet- come this way- we have to go-“

       A sound Gaya had never heard before, almost a kind of popping, registered briefly, before the world went from dark to completely black, and she and the two others fell forward, unconscious.


	20. The Advocate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: ableist opinions expressed by a character.

        Eirelan Starkeller, the best (and only) social worker at PS 180 in Coruscant’s Orange District, looked around at the small apartment where she lived alone.

        Just looking at it made her feel tired. When she had first moved in, almost ten years ago, its sparseness had appealed to her. Just out of university and ready to change the world nonviolently, through educating and healing the next generation- _ha, to think I actually thought_ _like that back then_ \- she had relished the idea of living like one of _them,_ the “real people,” the plucky poor, the true citizens of Coruscant. She had gone from her secondary school in the Terraces, where the students all had the latest coms and media players and there was a Neighborhood Watch which worked in collusion with Republic domestic guards, and then later with Imperial troops. She had gone, she thought, in search of something real, a life of grittiness but of sincerity, and she had also been searching for purpose. The Clone War generation had all been like that. The shifting of the galaxy’s political order had emboldened their revolutionary dreams, and the quagmire of the War itself, plus the seeming futility of the political game that surrounded it- had awakened their political conscience. They were going to reform the galaxy. Everything was going to be different, new, and beautiful.

        Now, she looked around at the apartment and saw the peeling paint, the cracking linoleum, and the slimy black mildew creeping in around the tiles near the sink. The light that lit the front room, the kitchen and den, was half-burned out, bathing the room in a dim, eerie greenish glow.

        She had tried to beautify the apartment when first she moved in. She had added some homey touches- bright psychedelic curtains over the drafty windows, laid-back, second-hand furniture, and racks of books on child psychology. The curtains were faded now, the furniture was scuffed, and the books sat, largely abandoned, in favor of some drugstore novel or HoloNet gossip printout.

       There was ugliness all around her, she mused as she made herself a mug of bland, mud-and-mildew-looking tea, and drew her media player from her briefcase, selecting the current novel, and laid it on the table. The ugliness surrounded her completely.

       She had looked into the world of the “real people.” She had seen parents refuse to attend their children’s progress meetings, or parents who came while they were “sick”- the word they used, as the stench of spice or the smoky almost-perfume of death sticks infested her nostrils. She had spoken with children who got hit at home, or who wished they did because it paled in comparison to what happened to them at school. She had looked into their eyes and seen pain, and she had seen anger, and at times, she had looked and seen _nothing_ , which was worse.

       She had seen the school nod and receive her memos and complaints and warnings, in the same gently indulgent tone every time. She hadn’t understood at first, but now she thought she did. The ugliness came like a river- no, like a wave- and it was constant, and neverending, and if you staved it off once it would be back in no time. It was a primal failure, deeper than the Empire or the Republic. The ugliness rose silently like a flood and, in time, covered everything and choked off the air, shutting out all light.

       She thought, as she sipped her tea, which was bitter, that at least the ugliness now tainted one less child, and that was Gaya Viviani. The girl’s parents had pulled her out of school and apparently, she was now attending an educational program at the New Sith Temple. Theoretically, Starkeller was still the girl’s caseworker, but she hadn’t been to see Gaya- no appointment had been scheduled- since a month before the change in school. She was busy, and besides that, Gaya Viviani made her depressed. The image of Gaya in Starkeller’s mind was of a _sad girl_ , a kind of overgrown prepubescent, who looked at Starkeller as if she really expected her to make Gaya a success at PS 180. Who looked as if she expected life to be good to her, in spite of all evidence so far to the contrary. Her parents had been no better- they too expected Starkeller to be some kind of miracle worker. The girl had _Krandyn’s Disorder_ , and they put her in classes with _regular people_. And then acted surprised when she got teased, or overwhelmed. And then who did they blame? _Eirelan Starkeller, that’s who._

       She looked up as the curtains swung shut and the window shades crashed down over the panes. Her tea had spilled, and in the growing inky-brown pool that spread itself over the tabletop, she was able to see the reflection of a figure standing behind her.

      “Stand up,” he ordered. She could hear a faint humming behind her, and a red light emanated from the same spot. She stood, turning slowly.

      “Mr. -“ she began.

      “Be quiet,” he snarled.

      “But-“ _where did he get a lightsaber?_

      “ _I told you to be quiet!”_ he hissed, and lunged forward. She felt a searing pain across her leg, so hot it was cold. She shrieked, and crumpled to the floor.

       “What do you want?” She tried to articulate the words over the sobs heaving from her chest uncontrollably. “ _What do you want?”_

       In response, he sank the blade into her right shoulder, and she screamed again. “ _Please-“_

       “Don’t you presume to beg me for _anything_ , you useless old shrew,” he snarled. “You damned incompetent hypocritical bitch-“

      “Please- I’ll do _anything_ -“

       For some reason, this caused him to become calmer, and he chuckled softly. “Of course you will.” He brought the blade up. “The tragic irony, of course, Ms. Starkeller, is that when it _mattered_ , you _didn’t_. You didn’t do _anything_. Nothing at all.”


	21. Kidnapped

      Gaya woke up in blackness. At first, the darkness was so complete that she could not see mere centimeters past the end of her nose. As she waited for her eyes to adjust, she tried to use the Force to probe the room, letting it make a kind of radar outline in her head. She sensed solid masses that were probably furniture of some kind, shelves perhaps; the heat of a running engine somewhere under the floor- which felt like metal sheeting- and, lying about two meters away…

       “Jaina?” she called. Or tried to. For the first time, she became conscious of the rag tied around her mouth. With a combination of the Force and spasmodic head jerking, she managed to loosen it. “Jaina?” she hissed.

      “Mm,” replied the being. There was wriggling, and then Jaina whispered, “Are you okay?”

      “I think so. And you?”

      “I’m fine.”

     “What happened, do you think?”

     “I think they used a blaster set to ‘stun.’ My Mom got hit with one of those once. She says it’s like being drugged, but cleaner and instantaneous.”

     Gaya recalled something from one of the Temple classes. “Imperial blasters have a ‘stun’ setting, right? Aren’t they the only blasters that still do?” Most weapons now had rays which caused paralysis, but did not stun the victim so as not to risk damaging brain function, which stunning in rare instances had been known to do.

      “Yeah. Man, we could really use Cody right now.”

      “Who else is in here?”

      “Just the three of us. Linxo’s next to me. It looks like they put some kind of muzzle-thing on her. They probably believed all those awful ‘Anzati are vampires’ myths. We can’t get it off with the Force because it’s got a buckle clasp.”

     “Right. We were going to learn those the week we came back, Master Witicca said.”

     <Wait a moment _,_ > said a voice in Gaya’s mind. With a start, she realized it was Linxo’s. <I am going to see if I can perceive the minds of our captors. I want to find out who they are and where they are taking us. Meanwhile, you two should get untied and arm yourselves.>

       After some more Force-manipulation and squirming, both girls were untied- the ropes were of thick but primitive cords of bantha leather woven together- and were doing their best with Linxo’s knots. With an abrupt feeling of suction in the Force, these suddenly unraveled in the girls’ hands. “Did you do that?” whispered Jaina.

      Removing the muzzle, Linxo smiled bashfully, her white cheeks blushing pale pink, as she nodded. <It was not so difficult…anyway, I have learned a few things. Our kidnappers are bounty hunters who have been supplied with Imperial resources. They wish us and our masters to believe they are slave traders, but in reality, they are delivering us to Eidolon base, and from there, off the planet. To a place called Byss.>

       “Byss?” Jaina raised an eyebrow. “That’s where the Emperor’s palace used to be. Well, it still is. Maybe we’ve been captured by the Imperial provisional government.”

      “Who runs that?” asked Gaya.

      “Sate Pestage.”

     “Palpatine’s old prime minister.”

      “That’s right,” Jaina confirmed in a way that struck Gaya as strangely narratively convenient- as narratively convenient as their whole exchange had been, she realized, but then put it out of her mind. They had too much to worry about without her weird thoughts.

      “What does he want with us?” she asked instead.

      “Ransom, probably,” said Jaina. “Or demands. Look, we can probably escape as soon as we’ve found our-“

      The room they were trapped in was flooded with light.

      It took Gaya a minute to process the fact that the door had slid open, but all at once the knowledge hit her, and she reacted, running in the direction of the door as fast as she could, skidding on the metal, certain that at any moment she would be shot.

       But her feet carried her out into the hall, where she perceived Jaina and Linxo standing with her, catching their breath. Unable to fully believe that something so simple as running past their captors- who had just realized what their prisoners, with the speed of Force-users, had actually done- had worked, the girls ran in the direction where they thought weapons might be, Jaina activating the door’s locking mechanism and shutting their captors in the hold as she ran.

       Their instincts proved correct as they came to a small room, with a counter on which several blasters lay, newly filled with fresh laser cartridges, waiting to be picked up by the accomplices they had been issued to. “Do you and Gaya know how to use these?” Linxo asked Jaina nervously. Now that there was no more need to be quiet- their escape would shortly be known- she had reverted to physical, sound-based speech. “We have barely learned how to handle lightsabers.”

       “I’ve used one in sim games,” said Jaina.

       “Cody let me try out his a couple times, after he refilled it and cleaned off the rust,” Gaya informed them. “They’re not too hard. You hold them like this-“ she hefted one onto her hip- “then you lift them like _this_ -“ she lifted it to ribcage level with both hands- “and then you point and pull the trigger. But they have kind of a kick, so you have to be standing pretty steady. And you have to keep both hands on them when you shoot, because of that.”

       Jaina lifted hers. “They’re kind of heavy.”

       “Yeah, they’re built for power, and to be used by grown men in top physical condition,” agreed Gaya. “Now, I’m not sure, but…” She thought. “In everything I’ve ever read, they say to either find escape pods or a hangar or else get to the bridge.”

       “This is a land transport,” informed Jaina. “They won’t have a hangar or pods.”

       “Then we should get to the cockpit or the bridge or whatever,” Gaya decided, pushing down the fear that kept trying to flood her system. “Before they spot us. Is there a computer with a map or anything?”

       “I will find out,” Linxo assured her, lapsing into a spaced-out silence. After about thirty seconds, she emerged. “That way, up a ladder. I will show you.”

       “Quick,” ordered Jaina. “Before they get us.”

             The ladder was most difficult, especially while shouldering the heavy blasters. Gaya missed her own lightsaber, which for now could only be put on a low-frequency, training setting. At the same time, there was something refreshing about the simplicity of blasters. You didn’t need much grace, agility, or training to use them. You just held, aimed, and fired. Her brain processed the one-step procedure better, and her muscles performed it faster. But they were big, at least this model. It took all the girls’ Force ability to climb while keeping the blasters from falling on the head of the climber below them.

        Jaina pulled herself up first, with Gaya in the middle and Linxo below her in case she felt she was going to fall. “Okay, hands up in the name of the New Repub- oh, bugger…”

       “They heard us coming, right?” mumbled Gaya, pulling herself up out of the ladder-shaft and finding about six blasters leveled at her and Jaina.

      “Yep.”

      “Dammit. I was kind of afraid of that.”

      “I should have perceived it,” Linxo moaned from inside the shaft. “But I was focused on climbing and scanning below us for any guards…I am so sorry…”

      “Okay, man, we’re putting the blasters down, already,” groaned Jaina. Gaya put her own weapon on the floor with some hesitation. She had enjoyed its weight in her arms and on her hip, and had been looking forward to trying it out.

      She observed their captors. The majority of the crew, manning the transport and covering her, Jaina, and now Linxo, were Imperial stormtroopers, which put Gaya vaguely at ease, since it reminded her of Cody- although, since his accelerated growth gene was deficient, he was closer to her age than to theirs.

The others, two of them, were the bounty hunters. One had his blaster leveled at them and looked as if he might fire due to an extreme nervous tic. The other sat in one of the console chairs, keeping an eye on them, his hand within reach of his blaster, yet not overly concerned. This one, a humanoid, wore a plain, mud-colored unisuit, jacket, and weapon belt, with well-worn, comfortable-looking boots and conventional, nondescript features.

His partner, the trigger-happy one, wore a jacket and tight pants made of glittering black patent-leather, with a studded belt. Around his neck and on his fingers (his hands were decked out in glovelets, a bad idea given that these exposed his fingertips, which most bounty hunters knew meant easy fingerprint identification) was platinum jewelry that looked too shiny to be real. His blaster and com looked to be streamlined, advanced models that each had hundreds of buttons and sensors apiece. Gaya, who had grown up in the Orange District and had seen some _serious_ bounty hunters, thuggers, and shady characters, nearly laughed. This guy was new to the business, unlike his partner, and probably put more effort into his style than into his actual work. He wanted to look like a bounty hunter. Real bounty hunters didn’t bother trying to _look_ like bounty hunters. They just _were_ , and if you didn’t believe them, they’d explain your mistake to you by shooting off one of your ears, and then charging you for their trouble.

       Beside her, Linxo had gone rigid. “What is it?” Gaya whispered.

       <She is coming,> Linxo replied, returning to telepathy so as not to be heard by their captors. <Darth Bane the First. She is nearly here. I can see her approaching, like a storm.>

       Gaya nodded. That made sense. The ancient Sith’s powers were pretty close to limitless, so she would probably know where the apprentices were in about five seconds flat. “Um, excuse me?” she asked the bounty hunters. “Can I just say something for a minute?”

       “Shut up,” said the flashy one.

      “Look, I’m not trying to give you a hard time, it’s just there’s something you should know-“

      The blaster went off. Its beam flew within a few centimeters of Gaya’s hair and hit the wall behind her right shoulder, leaving a slight singe mark. The younger bounty hunter snarled, “I said to shut up. Or the next one goes between your eyes.”

       By this point, Gaya herself could feel the metaphysical shadow in the air, like a change in temperature. It became almost physically chilly; she felt tiny bumps raise on her arms. Deciding that these kriffs deserved no further attempts at warning, she obligingly closed her mouth. She reflected that she was probably lucky this one was not an experienced bounty hunter; otherwise he’d likely have already shot her for continuing to talk. But then, maybe if he had been more experienced, he would have listened to her on the off chance that she was telling him something important.

       The three apprentices were the only passengers left standing as the port side of the transport separated from the main body and blew off into the scalding white void. Gaya ducked behind the ladder-shaft along with her friends as shrapnel flew through the air, some of it red-hot. Through the cloud of debris and smoke, the captives and the crew- the crew would still be alive; Bane the First would make sure of that- saw the gaunt, elegant figure of a young woman in black appear, seemingly from the air.

       She was wearing the form that Gaya knew she associated with warfare, because Bane the First herself had explained it to Gaya a few months ago, when Gaya had tentatively asked. Her black robe was torn and singed, splattered with red-brown stains; blood that was not hers. Her long red hair was a matted, greasy veil that she dragged on her back, and her smooth white skin was painted almost delicately with a thorny latticework of Sith tattoos.

       She carried no weapons. Bane the First was the only modern Sith never to carry a lightsaber, even though they had been in use for years before she joined the Order. In life, she had occasionally used a blunt, rusty-edged antique Sith sword. In death, she used nothing except her teeth. Gaya suspected that she had never been comfortable with weapons, but this was no problem, since she by and large didn’t need them.

       She killed the stormtroopers, or seemed to, with barely a glance. Her gaze turned on the two bounty hunters, and, as the wreck of the transport hung in the desert air, she approached the experienced bounty hunter where he had taken shelter from the debris under the console. With one long-fingered hand, she pulled him out by the collar, studied him a moment with academic interest, and then threw him bodily from the wreck and across the sand. He fell some distance away; Gaya couldn’t tell if he was alive or not.

       She rounded on the flashy one, who fired two shots directly into her chest. When she took no notice of these or of his third shot into her forehead, the girls saw the blaster clatter to the metal floor, and watched him fall backward onto the deck beside it. “What are you? What the hell are you?”

      Bane the First lifted him by the neck until they were face to face. He was shaking. “Please, lady, please don’t hurt me. I don’t know who you are, but you can have the brats, and I’ll never tell anyone what happened, you can have the credit for the whole thing. I don’t even want any money, just let me go-“

      He was cut off as Bane the First bent and plunged her white teeth into his throat. Gaya looked away until the sounds were done, and then she, Jaina, and Linxo stood carefully.

“Um, hello, Master,” offered Jaina. She was unable to keep her eyes from returning to the spot of blood smeared at the corner of Bane the First’s mouth, like badly-applied lipstick.

       “Thanks for finding us, Master,” added Gaya.

       After a moment, she heard Bane the First’s voice inside her head. This was easier for Bane the First, since the only language she seemed to speak was Sith. Unlike Linxo’s telepathy, Bane the First’s words were not really words, but rather image-concepts that Gaya mentally translated into messages. <Cody contacted me and explained that you had disappeared. I have informed your masters what has happened. I have learned much from the men who tried to take you. Come, we will rejoin your ‘New Sith’.> Before the girls could react to the message, all three experienced a moment of unconsciousness- akin to a very long blink, except with all six senses- and then found themselves lying in a canvas tent.

       Fighting off the nausea that the sudden teleportation seemed to have caused, Jaina announced, “I think we’ve found the Thar Tusken, guys.”


	22. Stolen Treasure

       “Just keep breathing,” ordered a voice from behind Luke, echoing in the narrow stone passage along with the teams’ footsteps.

       Luke barely turned. “I’m okay, Bane.”

      He felt her hand on his shoulder briefly; in the damp, dull chill of the tunnel, it was comfortingly warm. “You sure?”

       “Yeah.” Actually, he had come close to panicking earlier, when the tunnel had narrowed to less than a third of a meter across. His Jedi restraint had sustained him, as had a good-natured jibe from Apathian (and you could tell when Apathian’s jibes were good-natured, because there were so few that they stuck out like sore thumbs from all the jibes that weren’t) about Bane getting stuck, which even Bane hadn’t reacted to because she seemed to understand that they all needed to laugh. Now, he tried not to remember sliding himself along sideways, his face passing so close to some rock outcroppings that he could have kissed them, with the roar of the trash compactor from all those years ago sounding in his ears.

       Sensing that he needed a change of subject, she remarked, “I think my family liked you. You know, they met a Jedi once before. I think it was your master, actually. Kenobi. He helped my aunt Beiwe give birth. Can you believe that? We’d tried to steal from him before, and he killed a few of our warriors. So one day Aunt Beiwe and some other women and kids were digging for water, and he found them. By accident, we think. Well, they all ran except my Aunt, whose water broke just as he started coming over the dune. So he helped her squeeze the thing out, and then he brought them both back to us. Just walked into camp on foot, carrying Aunt Beiwe, who was carrying my cousin Vercingetorix. My Mom says it was the most badass thing she’s ever seen.” She laughed. “Plus, apparently your Master was kind of handsome when he was younger. There were several girls who saw that and went and offered themselves to him as brides, but apparently he said no.”

       Luke laughed. It was a funny story; he felt a sudden, familiar pang of sadness that it was one more thing he couldn’t ask Ben himself about. His Master’s spirit still appeared to him sometimes, along with Yoda’s and his father’s, but usually only with a specific goal in mind. There was never time to shoot the breeze or connect emotionally.

       “I thought Twyla was your cousin?” he asked. “You know, the one I met. The one who’s experimenting with kirbli-plant pollination in that one cave. Married to that skinny guy who’s trying to rebuild the speeder he found in that junkyard.”

       “Wow, you were paying attention. Yeah, she’s Vercingetorix’s younger sister. He actually got shot by settlers a while back. Speaking of which, could you not mention around my family that you grew up on one of the moisture farms here? My Mom and grandmother speak some Basic, and I didn’t tell them you were a settler. But about Twyla…she’s nice. We used to be best friends before the Empire took me. She’s always been kind of spacey. She and her husband both, really. They’re dreamers.”

       “Wait- you didn’t tell them my family were farmers?”

       “What’s the point? It would just upset them, and you didn’t even like farming-“

      “It’s still part of who I am! I’m not going to pretend to be something I’m not for your family. Would you pretend not to be a Sith for my Master’s spirit?”

       “Why the hell would I do that? Anyway, he’d be able to tell-“

        “It’s not a question of whether he’d be able to _tell_! When we get back, I want you to tell them the truth.”

       “No, Luke.”                                                    

       “Why the hell not?”

       “Because they’ll murder you. It’s a stupid idea.”

       “Don’t call me stupid!”

        “I never said you were stupid; it’s your _idea_ that’s-“

        “You are _unbelievable_!”

      Bane snorted. “Well, sorry, Master Jedi, I guess I didn’t realize you were PMS-ing today-“

        “Both of you!” called Witicca, from ahead of them in the procession. “Do you _want_ the Imperials to hear us all down here?” _Down here_ was one of the Althingard caves, which tapered down into a passage that opened up within a walled-off cellar in the base. Now, the New Sith, New Jedi, and assorted Thar warriors (including the newly-found apprentices – the girls, Cody, and a painfully hung-over Chad) crept along it. Darth Bane the First was the only exception; she preferred to work alone, according to Bane the Second, and would rendezvous with the group in time for the raid.

             Gaya stuck close by Jaina as cacophony reigned within the base. A few minutes ago, they had cut their way into the base through the partial blockage of the cellar passage to Althingard, and now, they had spread out to their various missions. The Thar warriors were generally serving as a distraction to direct Imperial resources away from protecting the files and personnel within Eidolon. However, once the majority of the battle was complete, Bane informed the teams, they did have plans to search for a “secret chamber” which, according to Jaina’s eavesdropping skills and basic grasp of Tusken, contained a “treasure” stolen from the Sand People by the Imperial who controlled Eidolon Base. Gaya was curious about that, but for the sake of the mission, she would stay with the apprentices, whose job was to secure the inner corridors- less risky than the Thars’, and less important than the task of the masters, which was to recover files and to capture any wanted Imperials they found.

        Gaya had at first been nervous- she had never fought in a real battle before- but she found that if she focused without analyzing her actions, she could get into a groove in which she deflected all the blaster shots that were in danger of hitting her or her teammates, only occasionally letting by one which scorched harmlessly into the wall, or which burned momentarily as it grazed one of their limbs. Looking around, she could see Linxo using her telekinetic skills to misdirect blaster bolts, as Cody- damn, she had never thanked him for approaching Bane the First, which he hated doing, to save them- picked up his refurbished blaster, which he preferred to a blade, and fired with mechanical precision. He didn’t shoot to kill, she noticed with some approval, only to disarm, using the Force to target troopers’ firing hands, or shooting them in the feet to knock them down.

       For her part, Jaina plowed ahead, cutting down troopers when she had to, as if she was always doing this. They were all helping, thought Gaya proudly, even Chad, with deflection. And they were markedly advancing.

        She barely managed to move her lightsaber blade as a man in fine robes of deep purple ran at them from the corridor ahead. He fell back as he saw them, scrutinizing them from the floor.

        Despite his opulent, even regal attire, Gaya perceived something rodentlike about him. Yes, she decided; he reminded her of an old, overgrown ranat, sleek and well-fed, but essentially most at home crawling through some gutter. “Stop,” she ordered, brandishing her blade, and then remembered to add, “in the name of the New Republic.”

        “Okay,” called Jaina above the din, taking charge. “Chad and Linxo, take care of the rest of the troopers. Gaya, Cody, you two help me cover this guy. He’s-“

        “Sate Pestage!” exclaimed Jacen Solo, coming around the corner with some of the other New Jedi apprentices. “You caught him!” Gaya’s eyebrows raised slightly. This was, she reflected, the most emotion she had ever seen Jaina’s brother show. “Do the masters know?”

        “We do now,” thundered Bane the Second triumphantly from behind the young Jedi. “We’ve been a step behind this sneaky bastard since we got onto the base. Now we’ve got him.”

        Commander Skywalker trained his blade on Pestage. “Sate Pestage, you are under arrest for war crimes according to the Conventions of-“

       “Oh, please,” sneered Pestage, in an impatient tone that did not match his pale, wild-looking features. “Do you really think I fear you two? After your father? And yours, for that matter?” he added to Skywalker. “And they weren’t even the most terrifying.” He cast a furtive look behind him. “I don’t particularly care what you do with me. Take me away from here now. Or you’ll all be sorry. So will I, of course. We’ll all be sorry together.” He laughed ruefully.

       “You talking about Bane the First, dear old Uncle Pestage?” snarled Bane. “Oh, that’s right. We know about her. I should have figured you’d be in on that sacrificial crap my father rigged up. He probably tried to feed you to her because you knew too much, but I guess there’s some filth even she won’t stomach.” She smiled nastily, her smeared black lipstick and Sith facial tattoos lending her grin a look of savagery. “She’s here, you know. In this base.”

       Pestage grew paler. “You little brat. You have no understanding of Lord Sidious. Just like that savage whore mother of yours. I should have taken Moff Tarkin’s advice and blasted your horde to oblivion, without troubling his Majesty with the knowledge of your existence. You and that feeble-minded, half-breed freak of a brother.”

       Bane’s white nostrils flared at the mention of her mother and her half-brother Triclops, but her voice stayed cool, almost eerily so. “She’s here, Pestage. She’ll be in this hallway any minute. I hope you haven’t said or done anything since Father died that might piss her off, because she’ll know about it. And she makes my father and Lord Vader look like paragons of forgiveness and empathy.” She paused for effect. “Last I saw her, she was down toward the hangar, exploding stormtroopers. That’s her new thing in battle, making enemy troops explode from the heart outward. It’s messy, but she likes that.”

      “ _Desert trash!”_ he spat.

      “Sate Pestage, the exploding Prime Minister. You’ll be an artistic inspiration for firework-makers all over the galaxy. I wonder if it hurts. I mean, it happens quick, sure, but if I know Bane she spins it out into an eternity of white-hot pain, really stretches each second like the beams of starlight when you look out the window as your ship goes to lightspeed-“

       “I surrender,” Pestage snarled at Skywalker. “Take me away from here. And muzzle her, if you don’t mind.”

        “On one condition,” Skywalker told him. “First, we’re going to have a look at your quarters.”

       “What are you doing?” Bane hissed at him as they led Pestage up to the lift.

       “I’m sorry we fought,” he explained quietly. “I thought I’d make it up to you. The Thar found their ‘stolen treasure.’”

        “Is this going to make me even angrier at Pestage?”

       “Could be.”

      “Good.”

           The base, according to Commander Skywalker, had, like most old, remote buildings on Tatooine, once been a moisture farm. Pestage’s quarters- his _nest_ , thought Gaya- were located on the top two floors which curved around the central courtyard space (now the hangar). They passed through luxurious rooms that were totally different from the sparse, joyless facility downstairs. Gaya recalled thinking, the first time she had slept over at Jaina’s house during the apprentices’ brief summer respite, that Jaina’s townhouse was the fanciest home she had ever seen, including the ones on the HoloNet real estate shows Ardan and Niama sometimes watched. This suite made Jaina’s house look like…well, like Gaya’s apartment. But as the initial awe wore off, Gaya found that, instead of enchantment, longing, and envy, her main emotion was disgust. _This is so excessive._

       “Ha,” whispered Jaina, having picked up the Force-shadow of her friend’s thoughts. “I wonder what he’s _compensating_ for, right?”

       “I know, right?”

       “I can sense the warriors,” Skywalker was telling Bane, who led the other Sith masters and Ken. “There should be a panel of some kind here, a hidden-“ His voice trailed off as the gaping hole hacked into one of the walls came into view. “Oh. Well, there it is.”

       As the dim lights in the room were turned up to their maximum brightness, Bane climbed through and peered around. What she saw made her breath catch in her chest. “ _Odyn eda Thor,”_ she murmured. Then, louder, “ _Ranjana! Hitta sasi adr!”_

       “Okay, she just muttered the names of the two major Tusken gods,” muttered Gaya, mostly to herself. She’d acquired some Tusken from Ranjana and Bane; she was good at languages, and it was hard not to in any case. “Then…something like…’Ranjana, get over here.’” And indeed, the newly-named Darth Scathach was climbing through the hole in the wall.

       “ _Odyn eda Thor!”_ Ranjana stuck her head out at them. “All you girls, come in. Master Skywalker, keep the boys away.”

       Glancing at each other, Gaya, Jaina, and Linxo approached the hole. Jaina and Linxo grabbed each other’s hands and held tightly. Jaina climbed through first, helping Linxo. Linxo then offered a supporting hand to Gaya, who declined. She wanted to do it herself.

       In the dim light of the room, she looked around, and gasped. The walls of the room were lined with rows of beds packed close together, with almost no space between them. Gauzy curtains, like the kind Gaya had wanted to hang around her bed when she was about six and going through her “princess” phase, were strung up haphazardly around them, giving a thin illusion of privacy. The air was close and thick with the smell of different perfumes mixed together, overlaid with some incense and the stink of many beings living together in a room without much air flow.

       It was easy to see where the multitude of beds and the overcrowded smell came from. The room was filled with beings. Most were human; many looked Tusken, either Thar or Chalahari. A few had the mousy, freckled look of farm girls. Some were not human- there looked to be a couple Twi’Leks, as well as some species Gaya couldn’t name. All the beings seemed to share only two qualities: they were all young, about Gaya’s age or a little older, and they were all female.

        As Apathian, Witicca, and the New Jedi Ken held Pestage, Commander Skywalker began rifling through the files of the console in front of him. “I’ll need the password to get into this, or I risk erasing information, since there’s probably a ‘self-destruct’ algorithm in the system- there usually is in Imperial software. But just taking into account what I know about this planet, I’d say this base has been a major center of operations in underground slave trafficking. Those girls there- not to be insensitive- I think they’re his cut.”

        Bane climbed back through the hole. She looked absolutely white, and Gaya saw she was shaking slightly. Skywalker and the others watched as she leaned against a wall momentarily, collecting herself. It occurred to Gaya that she was shaking not with fear, but with rage.

       “I know some of those girls,” Bane said aloud. “They’ve been missing since about half a decade ago. They were taken when they were about ten or eleven. Maybe twelve. At the oldest. Some were nine.” Her hands clenched. “Master Skywalker, you say you need the password.”

        “Um, yes,” said Skywalker anxiously. “But don’t worry, we’ll figure that out; why don’t you just go off for a minute and-“

       “Oh no.” She laughed harshly. “I don’t want to miss _anything_.” She approached Pestage slowly. “I’ll get the password for you, Luke.”

       Pestage’s eyes widened. “Stop her,” he croaked. “I have rights.”

       Skywalker looked as though he had just smelled something ugly. “Remember you’re not a vigilante, Master Bane. We’re officers of the New Republic.”

       “Give him the password,” Bane snarled at Pestage. “ _Now_.”

       “Fine.” Pestage rattled off a complex series of letters and numbers, which Ken recorded as Skywalker punched in, and began copying files.

      Witicca joined Skywalker at the console. “Oh man,” he murmured. “Master,” he called across the room to Bane. “You’re going to want to see this. So is Chancellor Organa.”

       “Now’s not a great time for politics, Witicca,” growled Bane, moving reluctantly away from Pestage and back toward the girls. “I’m a little busy right now.” She turned to the female apprentices. “Help everyone get dressed, and get them all out of there.”

       They turned toward the door of the suite as the clamor outside became shrieks of pain and fear. A grin spread slowly across Bane’s face. “You know, Master Skywalker, as someone who grew up around Prime Minister Pestage…I don’t think this is him.”

       Pestage stared up at her, bewildered. “What?”

      “No, I’m pretty sure we have the wrong man,” continued Bane cheerfully. Looking down at Pestage and favoring him with an innocent smile, she added, “And I’d like to apologize to you, sir, for all the inconvenience we’ve caused you.”

       Pestage gulped audibly. He was looking over Bane’s shoulder, at the blood-sodden young woman who stood there. “What are you talking about? Of course I am-“

       “No, sir, it’s all right,” Bane pronounced triumphantly. “And incidentally, since you are clearly not the man we are looking for, you cannot remain in our custody. You have rights. So we’ll be releasing you from New Republic protection.” She looked at him gleefully. “I can only hope you don’t have any kind of problem with any entity that might possibly be standing behind me right now.” Turning to Bane the First, she announced, “He’s been kidnapping underage girls and holding them hostage for…nefarious purposes.” The group watched as the air seemed to grow denser around Bane the First, like the air before a storm. There was little change to her physical features, but even a non-Force sensitive like Pestage could sense her mood.

       Pestage’s face was a mask of horror. “But- no- you can’t- you can’t possibly be serious-“ Abruptly abandoning his attitude of annoyed snobbishness, he turned and seized Skywalker’s boots. “ _I am the real Sate Pestage! And I have information you will want to know! I’ve been ruling the Empire for almost a decade! There is more that I can tell you than you would ever learn from those files alone!”_ He took a shaky breath. “Don’t let _her_ take me. Please- they say you are a _Jedi_ -“

       From where he stood, rooted in place by Pestage’s prostrate body, Skywalker gave Bane a desperate shrug. “Leia would want us to bring him back alive.”

       Bane grimaced. “I know. _Dammit_.”

       Jaina, who was helping the females, many of whom looked physically neglected, through the hole, muttered to Gaya, “Well, at least now we know why they nabbed us.” She grimaced. “Jeez, to think that if Bane the First hadn’t come for us we might right now be getting felt up by this pervert…yuck. And you know Palpatine tried to make Aunt Bane marry him before she escaped. Gross, right?”

       Gaya nodded absently. She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something she and the others weren’t seeing, some greater significance to the events of the past forty-eight hours…like a game of djarik. She’d never been good at that game, never quite seen the point of capturing queens that weren’t rulers of anything real. Ardan, who loved the game, had tried to teach her several times. She remembered his strategies- they were complicated machinations that always seemed to go his way; even when she thought she was doing something unexpected, another seemingly random move or two later, she would come to understand that she had been playing into his hands all along. It was unsettling, because it required thinking of someone in a totally nonhuman way, as if they were a preprogrammed droid or an autobus on a track. She hated the idea of him thinking of her that way, even if it was only a game.

Now, she felt that they were being led along through their reactions to seemingly random events on a game board, events which would, too late, transform before her eyes into a convoluted and multi-layered trap.

But whose?


	23. Politics

       Darth Bane took another gulp of tea. Tea-drinking was something she had come into later in life, since the Tusken drank only water, bantha milk, and whiskey. Primarily, she drank it as a source of short-term fuel, rather than as a beverage. Bitter, strong, and lukewarm so that she could drink it faster without burning her tongue- that was how she liked her tea. This stuff was getting cold, but that was fine by her.

        She thought, with the parts of her brain not creaking from ‘space lag’ and lack of proper sleep, that she must drink liters of this stuff every time she had to brief the Senate after a mission. The meetings were always called literally within an hour of their transport touching down, as if the Senate were making known its disapproval of the New Sith by punishing them via sleep deprivation for going on missions. Bane went by herself, these days, except when Luke decided to come along out of some masochistic sense of gentlemanly duty, as he had today.

        She yawned without bothering to disguise it. The first time this had happened, she had made an effort to clean herself up prior to appearing before the committee, but now, she generally felt that if the politicians had a problem with her attire or behavior, they could adjust the time they scheduled these meetings for. As it was, her hair hung lank and greasy, and whatever was left of her haphazard makeup was smeared and had bled in the Tatooine heat. She had back the faint sunburn, dryness of throat, and feeling of sand trapped in various places that had marked her childhood; oddly, these gave her a feeling of near-peace.

        “Eidolon Base had been maintaining control over the Tatooine political system for over a year, according to their master files,” she stated to the table of Senators, headed by Chancellor Leia Organa. “It was enabling several underground markets, including the black market for stolen moisture products and the slave trade. The girls we rescued were a bribe to Pestage, since officially the Empire doesn’t condone slavery either. We also found evidence that the base was loaning out its trooper regiments to local powers including the Hutts and the entity Offworld Corporation-“

       One of the Senators looked indignant. “You have absolute proof of the allegations against Offworld?”

        “We basically have the textual equivalent of their DNA all over the metaphorical crime scene,” replied Bane without much annoyance; she was too tired for that crap, she decided.

       “Yes,” piped up Luke. “And since they swore us an affidavit of their military loyalty after the Battle of Endor, we can prosecute their executives for treason in criminal court. Now, we may not get it to stick, but it’ll put the squeeze on them and we can learn-“

       “The Ethics subcommittee of the Committee on Commerce has looked over the evidence,” interrupted another Senator, with a look at Leia. “We were under the impression that the Chancellor’s office had agreed that no criminal action was to be taken against Offworld Corporation. It was decided that the evidence was only suitable for use in civil court.”

       Bane turned to her old friend, too tired and cynical to feel surprised, as Luke asked, “But L- Chancellor, why-“

       “We can return to this point later,” Leia said with an air of finality. “What else was discovered?”

       As Luke stared at his sister, Bane continued. “We discovered in Pestage’s private files information about six cloning facilities that were unknown up to now.”

      “More stormtroopers?” piped up one of the other committee members. “So what?”

       Bane shook her head. “We don’t think so. I mean, we don’t think it’s troopers. For one thing, they’re not located on Kamino, which is why we didn’t find them when we got there. For another, to be honest, the facilities’ blueprints make them out to be way better quality than the ones they use to grow troopers.

“See, with the facilities used to grow infantrymen, they basically go for quantity over quality. That means employees receive standard screening and there’s regular but routine maintenance. As a result, for every batch of clones, you get a certain percentage with some mutation or damaged gene that leads to atypical clones. Usually, it’s standard practice to euthanize them when the defect is discovered, which is almost always postnatal. But sometimes, if it’s a small enough defect, they’ll try to use the trooper anyway. That’s especially true as their supply of usable DNA shrinks.

        “The difference is that these facilities have top-notch cloning specialists, and even unskilled employees go through rigorous screening and background checks. Everything from the building layout to the maintenance schedule is better thought-out. That shows us that these are special clones somehow. Maybe from special DNA. DNA too important to waste on potential mutants.”

        “The encryption on those files was also the hardest to crack, out of all the files we recovered,” added Luke. “In parts, even the automatic cryptographer program we had on the ship wasn’t up to it. We had to decode some parts by hand, digit by digit.”

       “Where are the facilities?” asked Leia.

       The Jedi and the Sith looked at each other. At last, Luke said, “We…don’t know that. Yet.”

       _“What?”_ spluttered one of the politicians.

       “There were no coordinates in the files we recovered,” Bane said calmly. “We have to assume the location was so secret it was actually memorized by Imperial high command. Only people who absolutely needed to know.”

       “But we’re confident that Pestage will tell us where they are,” added Luke helpfully. “Especially if we were to offer him some kind of deal.” Bane couldn’t help but grimace at this prospect.

       “I’ll meet with him tomorrow,” Leia declared, rising. “Then, we’ll decide how to proceed. I may need you both back here at that time, but meanwhile-“ she shot them a small, sympathetic smile- “why don’t you both go home and get unpacked. We’ll adjourn for now,” she added to the Committee, and with some minor shuffling of data cards, the Senators were soon filing out.

       Bane longed to file out along with them, but she noticed Luke hanging back. “Leia,” he was starting to say. “About Offworld; I mean, you’re not really going to-“

       “I’m going to do what the Senate decides I should do. It’s called democracy. It’s something we do here,” Leia cut him off, sinking back down behind her desk, looking and sounding like Bane felt.

       “But they’re traitors! If it had been an individual doing what they did, he’d be going to prison and you know it. Aren’t they supposed to have the same constitutional rights as real beings now? How can that be if they don’t have to follow the same laws?” Bane registered some surprise through her mental fog. She hadn’t seen Luke get this upset about something in a long time, especially at his sister. She was vaguely impressed.

       Leia looked up at her brother, and Bane could see she was angry, too. “All right, Luke. You want to know why they’re getting a slap on the wrist? Because we need them. In case you didn’t notice, we were at war for years. Actually, the galaxy’s been through _two_ wars now, and now our infrastructure and economy are shot. Companies like Offworld couldn’t get a fair deal under Palpatine’s economic model, so they’ve supported us, and we still need their support. Without them, we lose jobs, we lose public confidence, and we lose trade because if nobody’s making any money, nobody can buy things, and there goes what’s left of the galactic economy as we know it. And everyone loves to tell me how we need to be putting money into schools and transportation and crap, but if the economy fails and people lose their jobs, who do you think they depend on to keep them off the street? _Us_ , that’s who, and we don’t have unlimited funds, because in case you hadn’t noticed, Luke, _we’re still at war with the Empire!”_

       Luke had looked mollified then, even chastened. He and Bane had left in silence, and they were silent until the familiar hoverbus back to the Temple, which he always accompanied her on, which she liked him very much for doing.

       He said quietly, “I guess she’s under a lot of pressure.”

       From his shoulder, where her head rested, Bane nodded. “She is that.”

       He turned to her, blue eyes wide and needy. “Mara…Bane…you _know_ …I mean, you’ve _got_ to know, deep down, because it’s the kind of thing you’re always telling Jaina…she’s _wrong_ , Bane. About what’s happening to Offworld. She’s got to be wrong.” His look was desperate, silently begging her, with all the emotional fragility of someone running on no sleep at all, to validate this, or, even better, to explain it away somehow. _Your father knew politics; you must know a little…tell me my sister isn’t really going to let people like that go free. Tell me the world doesn’t really work that way. Tell me she doesn’t really work that way._

       “Well, _politics_ ,” she said vaguely, trying to stay awake. “You need a special kind of brain to get it. I mean, I’ve got this feel for it, to some extent; that’s how I keep everybody in line. You know, at the Temple. But I don’t, like, have knowledge about it. Leia always did. She knows what she’s doing.”

       Even as she said it, she felt it as a lie in her mouth. She knew all the reasons why Leia was doing this- or, more fairly, letting the Senate do this- because she probably did know about as much as Leia when it came to political science, sociology, and economics- hell, they’d gone to the same prep schools, and then she’d gotten her higher education independently (in other words, she’d read a lot of books) while she was trying to take over the New Sith. That might not sound reliable to some beings, but she was still a Palpatine in some ways; she did like to think and learn, so that educational plan had worked better for her than it would for most.

       She supposed she should be angry at Leia, too, because the fact was, what her old friend was doing was wrong. Most people would call that hypocritical for a Sith, but just because it was hypocritical didn’t make it not true. It was wrong- maybe prudent and economically sound, but _wrong_. It was wrong in the way that you just knew some things were, without any moral code having to tell you. Bane had done a lot of things in her time that other people would think were wrong, and indeed she had done some things she was not proud of. But she’d always tried to stay away from that particular _wrong_ , because unlike the others, she couldn’t convince herself that it was subjective or justifiable.

       But Leia was her friend, and who knew? Maybe she _did_ have secret plans for Offworld that were too confidential to tell anyone about. Besides- and Bane knew this could just be her cynical nature talking- Leia was a politician now. She was not the same girl Bane had known in school. She had gone into the world, and seen its ugliness, and she had had some real power for the first time in her life, and…Bane didn’t want to finish the thought; she was just too tired to wrestle with this now.

       Governments involved corruption, and compromise, and if you weren’t going to do those things you couldn’t be in government. That was one reason Bane had focused her ambition on the New Sith, and not galactic politics. She’d had far too much of it as a girl, and she was not eager to reenter that world, where corruption was called “savvy” and people became figures in a data chart.


	24. Awake

         Darth Bane opened her eyes, and saw the face of Darth Bane hovering a few centimeters above her nose. This woke her up quite quickly.

         Darth Bane the First, who had been floating in the air just over her centuries-younger namesake’s sleeping form, settled herself lightly on Bane the Second’s desk. In her present form, she was clean of all gore, grease, and tattoos. Her black robe and long red hair moved faintly in the still, slightly musty air, as if she were underwater. The image presented was her usual one, the one she had worn when Luke had met with her. She was young and pure, radiating inner peace. Her mouth even arranged itself in a small, soothing, close-lipped smile.

         Bane the Second felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Privately, she hated being in a room alone with the ancient entity. It wasn’t so much that Bane the First was powerful, and probably quite mentally unstable- most Old Sith were- but that she took such pains not to appear so. She was like a Sarlacc pit hiding itself under a tranquil-looking patch of sand that some innocent Thar might ride over on his bantha, and be swallowed before either being even realized what was happening. And beyond the danger, there was something dishonest about it; dishonorable; almost cowardly.

         She forced herself to pay attention to the old master. Bane the First was speaking Sith, and although her Sith was slow and not much better than that of her contemporary namesake, who had learned it mostly out of old Sith tomes, Bane the Second still wasn’t as fluent as she wanted to be. Besides, the First One often spoke in extremely quiet, almost timid, tones.

        “I think you should go and speak to her,” she was saying in slow Sith. As she said it, a mental image of Gaya flooded Bane’s mind, answering the developing question _who is ‘her’?_

That was another thing; the First One seemed to have some difficulty with nouns. Compared to everything else about her, though, Bane hardly found this strange at all.

        Still not totally awake, Bane nodded blearily. “Um…yes, my master. But why?” Her Sith probably came a little faster, now that she thought about it, but her pronunciation felt pretty atrocious in her own mouth.

       The old master considered this for a long time. It occurred to Bane that she might not be used to explaining the reasoning process behind the orders she gave, especially in a non-telepathic way. When you were one of the most powerful Force-users ever, people probably didn’t ask you why you wanted them to do things, especially when you were Bane the First. They just did them.

         “I feel she needs to speak to you,” she said at last, apparently considering each word carefully. “About…” She gesticulated faintly, unable to sum up the apparently complex reasons. “Your brother.”

        Bane found the girl curled up in the common room near their kitchen, reading her old copy of _Ten Thousand Years of Darkness_. Bane recalled reading the epic for a literature class back in school; she remembered that she hadn’t been as taken with it as Leia had. She couldn’t bring herself to care about the love life of Empress Teta, the ancient conqueror whose life the poem was (very) loosely based on, when the more interesting parts of the woman’s story- her victories in battle- were only lightly touched on, especially in the sections they’d studied most. For that reason, it had always struck her as a little sexist. Teta was a woman, so the most important thing in her life had to be romance.

        But then, it was an old poem. It had been written…around the time that Bane the First had been alive, actually. Huh.

       “Hey,” she greeted Gaya. “You’re up early.”

       “Huh? Oh- yeah. I just woke up and couldn’t sleep anymore.” Gaya shifted in her spot on the lumpy couch by the small, grimy window. She shook her head and smiled ruefully. “The, uh, the one day we don’t have to get up for class, right?” As a reward for the success of such an important mission, and because she herself had wanted the opportunity to sleep until around noon, Bane had declared that classes would be cancelled that day. “You’re, um, up early, too, Master.”

        “Yeah, the other Master Bane woke me up about something.” Bane rubbed her jaw thoughtfully. “Hey, Gaya, just out of curiosity- what’s that thing you always have around your neck?”

       Gaya took it off and passed it to her. “Ardan…Ardan gave me it. It’s, um, just this pendant thing on a chain. I liked it a lot when I was little so he just said I could have it. I, um, don’t know where he got it.”

       Bane examined it. The design on it looked familiar, but she couldn’t think from where. “He never said?”

       “Well, he said once that he got it at a school he went to,” Gaya explained. “But when we showed it to, to the police, after…you know, after he went missing, they said it was the crest of this fancy private school. On Naboo, I think. They checked, and he never went there.” She looked away. “They said maybe he bought it. But I think they thought he stole it.”

       Bane examined it. “Huh. It’s the same school Chancellor Organa and I went to. They changed the crest when they re-named it after Senator Amidala, but I’m pretty sure that was what it used to look like.” She paused, and then said, “Gaya, what if I did my own searching for Ardan?”

       “Why?”

       “You and your mother at least deserve some closure. If he walked out on you, he shouldn’t just get away with it. And if not, then he could be in danger.” She shrugged. “I just feel like the Force is leading me in that direction. Of course, it could take a while because Master Skywalker and I have to find those secret cloning facilities, but I might be able to find something.”

       Gaya nodded slowly. “That might be…good,” she agreed. “I mean, I don’t know what we’d say to him if you found him. But I guess it would be nice just to…you know, just to _know.”_

       “Sure.”

       Outside, it grew slowly lighter. Gaya said, “You know what I’ve sort of been thinking about a lot?”

       “No- what?”

      “Well, not that I don’t, you know, appreciate everything you and the Order have done for me, it’s just that…I guess it doesn’t seem _fair_.”

       “What doesn’t seem fair?”

       “Well, that I got to come here.” Gaya shook her head sadly. “I mean, I got to come here, and be in a, you know, a better environment. I mean, my classes are smaller, I know the masters better than I knew my old teachers and they know me better, and we don’t have so many tests so you can slow the lesson down if people don’t understand…and it doesn’t seem fair. Because if I had all my same issues but no Force connection, I wouldn’t be able to come to a place like this. I’d have no alternative to PS 180. So I worry about all the students I knew who had issues like mine, or worse, who need a place like this, but can’t come because they’re not Force-users.”

       Bane leaned back. “Was it hearing about that social worker you knew being dead that brought this up? Because they’ll find a replacement for her, you don’t have to worry-“

       “No, I’d been worrying about this for a while.” Gaya shifted. “Besides, Ms. Starkeller…she tried to be nice to me, I know that, and to help me, but she wasn’t much different from the rest of them. They didn’t think any of the students would amount to anything, but especially the ones with special needs…I think they thought that teaching us stuff was like throwing money in the trash. I mean, I know they have all those HoloNet specials now about Kranders-“

       “Kranders?”

      “Uh- huh. People with KD. Anyway, they have all those special reports about Kranders who are, like, geniuses with computers or physics or whatever, but…we’re not all like that. I mean, when you have KD, it’s like if you’re not smarter than normal people or better at some special skill, then you’re a burden on society or whatever. That’s how people act.”

       “Well…” Bane tried to think of a response. The only thought that her mind seemed to be able to generate was that none of the Old Sith masters had had to deal with heavy stuff like this where their apprentices were concerned. “Well, you know you’re not a burden to _us_ ,” she said awkwardly. “I mean, I know Master Apathian can be… _abrasive_ and _impatient_ toward you, and I know his attitude can…can get you down. But we’re not letting you come here because we feel sorry for you or anything like that. You contribute to our Order. You’re not a burden.”

       She shifted. “So…Master Bane the First said you wanted to talk to me about my brother.”

       “Uh-huh. Commander Skywalker’s apprentice’s father.”

      “Ken’s father, right. So what do you want to know?”

      “Well, I heard you saying that he’s trying to get a legal name change and since his, um, facility is putting up some struggles, so you and he found some disability advocate group-“

       Bane nodded. “That’s right. The ‘Diversity Alliance.’ That’s what they call themselves. They’re a little more radical than most of the groups, but that’s why we like them, frankly.”

       “That’s why I want to be involved with them.” Gaya gesticulated momentarily, as if, frustrated by her inability to convey her feelings with words, she was attempting to resort to charades. “I mean, I want to, like, volunteer for them or something. In whatever free time I have between my work and studies here. I looked them up a little bit on the HoloNet. They actually have people with disabilities working for them, in positions of power, even. And they say Krandyn’s is, like, a natural thing. Like some people are just born with it, because of evolution. And it doesn’t mean we have something wrong with us. None of the organizations that helped my mom out with finding me therapy or that we used to donate to ever said things like that. They would be, like… _sympathetic_.”

        “You don’t want sympathy,” Bane said aloud.

       “It’s better than being messed with, I guess, but no, I don’t. It’s hard, feeling like other people are being charitable just by letting you, you know, sit with them or whatever.” She paused. “It got to be so I used to assume people were just hanging out with me to be nice. That’s even what I used to think about Jaina. Sometimes I still feel like that about our friendship.”

        “Jaina hangs out with you because she likes you. Trust me on that. I’m like an aunt or something to all Leia- _Chancellor Organa’s_ kids. Jaina talks to me.”

        “I know, Master, it’s just sometimes emotionally I doubt it. It’s not logical. It’s just a thing I think sometimes, and I think it has to do with confidence. I think if I spent time around people who’ve been through what I’m going through now, who learned to be confident anyway, it would help. And besides…I’d be helping other people with Krandyn’s. Through the Diversity Alliance.”

       Bane thought about it. It would require some logistical planning, Apathian would bitch about it, it might set some precedent that could be somehow bad in the future, and it might overextend Gaya. That was even assuming that the Diversity Alliance people needed volunteers. She had a feeling they wouldn’t turn down help, though, and it could be interesting to see what would happen if they were linked to the New Sith. But it would be a lot of extra work for Gaya…

       She shook her head. Now she was doing it, too. She didn’t need to protect Gaya from things like extra stress; if Gaya felt she wanted to take more on, that had to be her responsibility. She didn’t need to be one more person in Gaya’s life who was treating her with special care. Even Gaya’s mother did that, occasionally, Bane knew.

       “I’ll talk to the person who’s handling my brother’s case,” she said at last, instead. “See if he can give me a contact for volunteering.”

       Gaya smiled timidly. Bane recalled that the girl had been more timid when she’d first become an apprentice; still, the timidity hadn’t left her yet. “Thanks, Master.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case you were wondering, you can find the REAL "Diversity Alliance" (the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network) at "autisticadvocacy(dot)org." I'm not promoting them in exchange for anything and I'm not officially affiliated with them in any way, I just happen to think they do great work.


	25. Triclops

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: discussion of institutionalization, clinical views of mental illness, institutionalized ableism.

        “You okay?”

       Gaya tore her gaze away from the window in the Temple’s workout room, which she had been staring into without really seeing. She was tired, having woken up early that morning and not having been able to fall back asleep, but she was also apprehensive. “Oh- uh, yeah,” she replied to Cody, who as usual was sharing the workout room with her. Working out was something Imperial troopers did in their leisure time, apparently, so Master Bane allowed Cody to use the room before and after phys ed classes, to ease his transition into his role as an apprentice. “Just thinking.”

       “You seem worried.” Those who looked at Cody and saw only his “jock”-like frame and taciturn nature wouldn’t credit it, but the boy was extremely empathetic- his particular Force-ability seemed to be an acute and thorough knowledge of the emotions of those around him. Gaya wasn’t sure if that was connected to his genetic identity as a clone, but it seemed to make sense that it would be- clones would have to empathize with each other strongly in order to function well as a team.

       It occurred to her that such an empathetic nature must be difficult to deal with when you were ordered to, say, kill the Jedi you’d been serving alongside for months, to use a historical example, or to firebomb a settlement full of civilians. She had often wanted to ask Cody about such things, but she didn’t know how to begin, and anyway she would be afraid of offending him or prying.

       “Well, I kind of am,” she said, deciding to go for broke. “See, I talked to Master Bane about wanting to get involved with other disabled people somehow. So I’m going with her today to visit her brother in the psych ward, and he’s going to give me some information about an advocacy organization that’s been helping him. I might end up doing volunteer work for them.” She rubbed her eye; she was going to stop her workout now; she was too tired. “I guess the reason I’m nervous is I’ve never been to…you know, to a mental hospital before. I mean, I’ve never talked to a mentally ill person before either. Except for some street people in my neighborhood. And they didn’t have official diagnoses or anything.”

      He set his free weight down. “You should be safe. They have security at those places, and I’ve heard most patients don’t get violent.” He paused. “Would you like me to come with you? If Master Bane says I can?”

       Gaya felt the blood rushing to the twin ruddy patches on her fair cheeks, and to her ears. She liked Cody; she found herself occasionally liking him in a way that was so strong and desperate it scared her. She had been the one to find him in the old Jedi Temple, and had been the one to walk in on a meeting between him and Bane the First in a geode cavern on Anzat a year ago, and she felt that he liked her, too, in some way. But she had never yet met a boy who reciprocated her feelings toward him; it seemed unlikely that one was going to start now. Still, having him along would make her feel better. “Okay,” she replied. “If you don’t mind.”

* * *

               Gaya hadn’t expected the institution to be such a relatively pleasant building. It was rather imposing and fortified-looking, but in screened-in balconies and on the well-guardrailed roof, she could see some pleasant areas made green with potted plants. “It’s different than I expected,” she remarked to Bane and Cody.

        To her surprise, the master’s lip curled in an expression of distaste. “Wait until we’re inside.”

       Inside, Gaya felt immediately overwhelmed. The smells of disinfectant, some kind of nauseating food, and undertones of waste almost made her turn back and refuse to go in. These were coupled with the sounds of an intercom and shoes squeaking along the floor, and with the sight of the seemingly endless, echoing white-tiled hallways. Gaya took a deep breath through her mouth and followed Bane inside, trying not to look anywhere but at her feet.

       “It’s not great,” she remarked to Bane as they received their visitor’s passes. “But I’ve been to a hospital before. When the psychotherapist diagnosed me with Krandyn’s. They’re mostly all like this inside.”

       “Wait,” Bane ordered, pinning the pass to her cloak. “Okay, you two. Follow me.”

       The orderly at the desk beside the lift station looked up at Bane with relaxed contempt. “You’re back.”

       “That’s right,” said Bane impatiently.

      “Who’re they?”

       “Students of mine.”

       “Be careful with them down there. I’ve seen things get rough.”

       “You mean the guy who didn’t want to wear pants?” Bane raised an eyebrow. “These two recently helped capture an Imperial base and bust a slave trafficking ring. So, you know, I think they can just about handle a half-naked guy behind a glass wall.”

       “I hear your brother’s applying for a bed in one of the halfway houses.”

       “That’s right. After we get this legal nightmare sorted out, we’ll start on that one.”

       “You shouldn’t expect too much from him.”

       “Huh.” Bane shifted. “You know, I’ve always been of the opinion that it’s better to expect too much from people than too little. Of course, the ideal thing is to expect just the right amount. Now, as much as I’d love to keep talking to you, I have to go see my brother. Bye.” Gaya and Cody quickened their paces to follow Bane as she swept into one of the lifts, headed down.

            The corridors had grown fluorescent and narrow, with considerably less gleam. Gaya could now hear occasional bangs or cries, although they seemed distant and came irregularly. She was still breathing through her mouth; she was afraid to stop. She didn’t want to know what it smelled like down here.

       “Here we are,” announced Bane, coming to one of the metal doors, swiping her pass, and waiting for it to slide open slowly with a drawn-out creak.

       The room was about the size of Gaya’s bedroom at her mother’s apartment, maybe a little smaller. It contained a narrow bed, a metal chest with a broken lock that stood beside the bed, doubling as a nightstand. A few older-looking books (their discs were bigger than the modern nanotech discs and chips most books came on) and a reader sat on top of it. The other furniture was a table with two chairs. There was a small, grimy window, and Gaya realized that a very small refresher was adjacent. Looking in from where she stood, there didn’t appear to be a shower.

      She almost didn’t see the man, because he was gray like the rest of the room- he was pale and gaunt, with shock-white hair and a gray tunic. As she saw him, his eyes fell on her, and Gaya felt herself freeze up. She wasn’t sure, she realized, exactly what Bane’s brother’s issues were. _Bane wouldn’t have brought us along if it wasn’t safe_ , she told herself… _but then, Bane could have been wrong._

       But all Triclops did was stand up- he had been sitting on the bed- and hug Bane, who, to Gaya’s surprise (because Darth Bane was not a hugger), hugged him back. “How are you?” Bane asked him.

      “Not bad,” he assured her. “I met with the woman from the Diversity Alliance just yesterday. Things are coming along.”

      “How are things in here?”

      “Fine,” he said airily. “You know. Things fall into a routine.”

      Seated at the table across from him now, Bane leaned toward her brother. “Really? You expect me to believe that? You’re a crappy liar, Triclops.”

      “All right, the orderlies have been looking through my things a bit. And they keep on turning the damn lights on during the night and claiming it’s a test of the power grid or a fuse shorting out or whatever else. But that’s because I’m making their jobs difficult. It’s to be expected.”

       “What the hell? Because you don’t want to be treated like a living doll? Why the hell is it your fault that you’re not a vegetable?”

      “Mara, put yourself in their shoes. Their jobs are awful. If they can make things into a predictable routine, they can at least get through it without having to think about it much. Now, I don’t apologize for functioning at the level that I do, or for the needs that I have, but it’s unfortunate for them, too. They have no job security, practically no benefits or rights- they’re not even allowed to unionize. The only people they can take all that out on are us.”

       Bane took a deep breath and let it out slowly. At last, she said, “Well, my apprentice Gaya here has a question for you. That’s why they’re here. This is Gaya-“ she indicated Gaya, who was sitting with Cody on the bed- “And this is Cody.”

       Gaya tried to smile. “Nice to meet you.”

       “And you, too,” he replied. “Your master has told me so much about you. About both of you.” He took a data card and scribbled down a few lines. “This is who you should talk to at the Alliance.” He smiled at them. “You know, I’m proud of both of you. I’m proud of all the apprentices. It’s refreshing, to see young people devoting their time and channeling their abilities into helping their society.” He paused. “Now, your Master did ask me if we could briefly talk privately. Why don’t the two of you go upstairs and wait for her? I hope to see you again soon.”

           “Show me the pendant,” he instructed her as soon as the apprentices were out of earshot. “Yes,” he murmured, examining it. “It’s your old prep school’s crest. I looked it up.”

        “I knew that. What was this Ardan guy doing with it?”

        “Did you check the student roster during the year the pendant was minted?” His gray eyes were almost playful. Bane understood that he was solving a mystery now; in here, the affairs of the outside world could seem unreal.

        “Yes. His name wasn’t there.”

       “There was another name, though. Quite a famous one.”

      Bane sighed. “Yes, Triclops, okay. Our father is an alum there. He was never a member of Naboo’s upper class, and at the time it was the prep school with the best scholarship program. At least that’s the story. So what? You’re saying Ardan got our father’s old school pendant? Who the hell is crazy enough to steal from the Emperor?”

        “He didn’t.” Her brother sighed. “I’ve been having the visions in my sleep again. The meds aren’t helping right now. And I…it’s not just blueprints I’ve been drawing. I leave myself notes now; the other me is figuring this all out. I know things, but I don’t know what I know. It’s like being possessed by the spirit of a Force-user but not being one yourself. Here.” He handed her a hand-folded dossier of flimsiplast. “Sorry for the condition; you know what my handwriting is like when I’m having an episode. I’ve been looking at it while awake, but I can’t put it all together. Maybe it needs a fresh mind.”

       “Wait. Your sleeping self has been trying to figure out what happened to Gaya’s stepfather? Why? I thought he just designed weapons.”

       “I can’t imagine. It must be important in some way. I don’t understand why he chooses to focus on some problems more than others. If it helps, though, other names come up besides theirs. There are mentions of Darth Bane the First, although he doesn’t seem to know where she fits in; only that she does. They mention Skywalker and the Solos, briefly.” He paused. “You won’t want to hear this, but there’s one more name that keeps coming up in his notes.”

        Bane sighed. “Mine?”

       “No. Father’s.”


	26. Pestage

        Darth Bane heaved a mental sigh. _My second cell in as many workdays._ It was vaguely worrying that the cell holding Sate Pestage, from what she’d glimpsed of it, was so similar to the room her brother occupied. _Yep, that’s our great new awesome government- we treat our sick people like criminals. For this I risked my neck and sacrificed my men, flying a bunch of stolen ships and fighters into the belly of a planet-sized battle station even more dangerous than its predecessor?_ That wasn’t fair to Leia or the others, she knew, but she thought it anyway.

       Across the metal table, Pestage sneered at her. “I really cannot imagine why you are here. I have told your Republic everything it wanted to know. I was questioned personally by your Chancellor Organa, which was extremely gratifying.” A smirk spread across his face like greasy wastewater. “I remember meeting her once in passing, when she was in school with you. I considered asking your father for her hand instead of yours, but I must confess I always saw a certain…spirit in you that Organa, despite her bravado and charms, always lacked. An anger, I suppose.” He shifted. “And you seem to have made a career for yourself out of it.”

      Bane took a deep breath and tried to look intimidating. This was difficult, as she was purposely distracting herself partially from the conversation, in order to control her temper, with the mental image of Pestage, tied to four banthas, each pointed in a different direction, and being slowly ripped apart as they each ran separate ways. It was a favorite Tusken method of dealing with “settlers” (the generic term, as far as Tusken were concerned, for anyone who wasn’t a Sand Person, but especially the farmers and townspeople of Tatooine) who, for example, kidnapped Tusken girls as Pestage had done.

      “I’ve read your statement. I came about this.” She set Ardan Teta’s pendant on the table.

      Pestage stared at it for what felt like a full minute. He had gone even paler than usual. At last, he said, “I’m not certain what you mean, Princess. I am afraid I do not recognize this.”

      “It’s the engraved setting from one of the rings that upperclassmen receive at the school now known as the Padme Amidala Memorial Leadership School of Theed, on Naboo,” Bane told him. “It was pried from the ring itself and punctured, then stuck on this chain. Now, what’s interesting is this,” she continued, holding the pendant up in case he wanted to have a closer look. He didn’t. “This shows the school’s crest, which by the way is different now; it was changed along with the name after my father became Emperor, actually. But it also states the year the ring’s owner would have graduated. Now, I looked at that school’s records. This was found in the possession of a man named _Ardan Teta_.” She scrutinized Pestage’s face. There- deep in those beady eyes. It wasn’t quite recognition, but there was some knowledge brought to the forefront of his mind, especially when she’d said his last name.

      “The funny thing is,” she kept going, “That there’s never been anyone named Ardan Teta at that school. Not that year or any other. But there was someone else- someone who apparently did graduate that year. Someone we both know very well. Although I think you knew him better than I did. I think you were the one person in the galaxy who knew just about everything there was to know about him.”

      She leaned in. “Which means you know about Bane the First. Well, she’s with us now. And you know what happens to people who upset her.”

      He snorted, although he still looked unsettled. “My dear, if you truly knew Darth Bane, you would know that she is not ‘with you.’ If you are lucky, _you_ are with _her._ ”

      “Doesn’t matter,” she replied, deciding to wait until after the interview to process what he had said about Bane the First. “Cause I know I can still get her to make you talk.” It was true. Bane the First hadn’t been allowed to take blood since coming to stay at the New Sith Temple. If her assessment of the ancient master was correct, Bane thought, the First One probably couldn’t wait to attack someone. “And that’s the only part of my interactions with Bane the First that is relevant to your life, Pestage. Because I can’t legally beat the crap out of you until you tell me what I want to know, but…hey. She’s not a civil servant. She’s not even alive. How the hell am I supposed to control what _she_ does?”

      He was quiet for a while. At last, he said, “What is it you want?”

      “Tell me what’s going on at the cloning facilities.”

      He raised an eyebrow. “I would assume that _cloning_ is what is going on at the cloning facilities.”

      Bane glowered at him. “Ha. You got me. But you know, Bane the First isn’t famous for her sense of humor.”

      “Well, you need to articulate your question better,” he snapped.

      “Okay. _Who_ is getting cloned at the aforementioned facilities?”

      In that instant, she saw his face crack open into a look of absolute panic. It was gone so quickly that a woman less certain of her own mind than Bane might have doubted that she had seen it. She understood that this was the one question he had been hoping she wouldn’t ask him.

      “Pestage, it’s time to decide who you’re more afraid of,” she told him. “Whoever it is you’re protecting, or Bane the First.”

      Pestage took a deep breath. At last, he said, “I understand that you and I have hated each other for about two decades at this point. I know you think your old school friend Organa let me off too easily. It is not easy for me to ask this of you. But I am asking: if I answer your question, make sure that no one knows I was the one who told you.”

      “I’ll do my best.” She meant it. If anyone was going to avenge themselves on Pestage, it was going to be her and her tribe.

      He leaned toward her, so that she had to breathe through her mouth to avoid the stench of his breath. “The cloning facilities are for the production of clone bodies. For the consciousness of Emperor Palpatine.”


	27. Back from the Dead

      Leia slumped in her desk. Her hands massaged her temples and face. Without looking up, she said, “Mara-“

      “Bane-“

      “ _Bane_ , you have nothing.”

      Bane was flabbergasted. “Leia, look, I respect you and I love you because we’ve been friends for so long, but what the hell are you talking about? Listen, I don’t know what Luke told you on our way here but-“

      Leia glared at them both. “You. Have. _Nothing.”_

      “But Leia, we’ve got Pestage’s intel,” began Luke. “We have the pendant-“

      “You have _jewelry_ ,” snapped Leia. “Jewelry and the word of an old politician who didn’t want a bloodthirsty Sith ghost after him.” She glared at Bane. “Do you two know the kind of pressure we’re under here? Do you know how hard everyone here is working to keep the Republic together? Between the Imperial attacks and the recession and everything else? And on top of all that, you want me to go to the Galactic Senate with the story that not only is Palpatine still alive, he lived down in the Orange District for a decade with a girlfriend and stepdaughter, running a cantina.”

      “Yes.” Luke’s tone had changed- it was deeper, and cooler, devoid of its usual warmth and somewhat nasally optimism. “Yes, Leia, that’s exactly what I expect. Because it’s _true_. And people have to _know_.”

      “People won’t know. No one will listen to me, and there’ll be a vote of no confidence and I’ll be replaced by Borssk Fey’la or one of those wingnuts. You think they’ll vote to keep pouring money into both your organizations then? Especially yours,” she snapped at Bane. “There’s a strong contingent in the Senate now that thinks the money being poured into the New Sith- and the New Jedi, for that matter- is a waste of taxpayers’ credits. Some of them are saying it’s unconstitutional for us to be endorsing you at all, because you’re religious orders.”

      “Look, don’t wave that threat in my face, Leia, I don’t give a damn what the politicians say,” retorted Bane. “I’ve got to put people on this. It’d be irresponsible not to.”

      “But our two orders just caught Sate Pestage and freed an entire planet from Imperial rule just over a month ago,” protested Luke. “What more do they want?”

      “They want you to wave your magic Force-wands and make everything the way it was before Palpatine was anything more prestigious than class valedictorian,” said Leia, looking less angry and more rueful. “The economy. The Empire. Our infrastructure. Civil unrest. The deficit. They just want it all gone, and they’re blaming you because you’re living on the Senate’s credit chip and you don’t churn out quantitative, easy-to-grasp results. Because you’re _orders_ , not _factories_.”

      “Well, what can we do about that?” Bane shook her head. “We’re trying to make Jedi Knights and Sith Lords, not comlinks. It’s a little more complicated and you can’t streamline it as well. People learning and growing up is always messy and inefficient. That’s the mistake they made with the public schools; they forgot that.” She looked pensive. “That’s how you get Gaya Viviani.”

      “And maybe Palpatine,” remarked Luke thoughtfully. “I mean, we know he went to that Naboo private school, but maybe he was there on a scholarship or something. He’s just the sort of person you could imagine clawing his way up from nothing.”

     “Well, right now I don’t need a psychological profile of him, I need to know more about these clone bodies,” Leia declared. “How does that whole thing work, from a Force-user’s perspective?”

     “Well, it’s not quite the same as what Bane the First does,” explained Bane. “It’s easier, for someone as powerful as my father, because you only have to keep your consciousness intact after death, as opposed to your physical presence on this plane of existence as well. Then, you just plug yourself into one of the clone bodies and carry on where you left off. The real danger is that you would be lost in the transition from your old, dead body to your new one. You would have to keep yourself from joining with the Force, as most of us presumably do when we die. But he did.”

      “Even the Force probably didn’t want to join with _him_ ,” muttered Luke. Bane and even Leia laughed.

     “So this Teta guy was a clone of his,” Luke murmured. “Amazing. I think I met him one time. Last year when Gaya was going home for the summer, he had come to bring her home and he was helping her pack her stuff. I shook his hand. He seemed…kind.”

      “They say he always seemed like that,” remarked Leia. “Until he got so powerful he didn’t need to anymore.”

      “But he didn’t look like the Emperor at all,” insisted Luke. “He was really young. He looked normal. He had hair and his eyes weren’t even yellow.” Luke shook his head. “To be honest, he kind of resembled Gaya. I mean, not in an obvious way, but when they're standing next to each other, you can see it. I thought they were related until you told me he was her stepfather,” he added to Bane.

      Bane sighed. She liked Luke, liked him a lot, actually, but sometimes he didn’t think things through. “Luke, he would be a lot younger in this body than he was when you met him. And he wouldn’t have the scars, because Lord Vader always told me he got those in some duel with some Jedi whose name escapes me. All I remember is that according to Lord Vader, the Jedi was, like, this incredibly angry guy. Just habitually. By Jedi standards. Anyway, that’s how he got scarred. If you’ve ever seen an image of him from back when he was a senator, he’d look closer to that.”

      “Well, in any case, what if we got some of Ardan’s DNA somehow?” suggested Luke. “Then, we could quietly order a standard paternity test. We could use Bane and Triclops’ DNA. Since we know Palpatine was their father, if Ardan was a clone of Palpatine, he’d have the same DNA, and the test would say he was their father, too. Then at least we’d have proof.”

      “It’s a good idea, but if Ardan is…smart, he won’t have left any DNA behind. He wouldn’t take that chance,” mused Leia.

      “We have to try,” insisted Luke.

      Bane nodded. “It’s a place to start, Leia. We can ask the police working his disappearance, or Niama.”

      Leia sighed. “Okay, here’s what I’ll do. I’m going to tell the Senate you’re investigating corporate ties to the Empire, and that Ardan Teta is wanted for questioning as a possible material witness. I can stall them for a while. Just get to the bottom of this as fast as you can.”

      “Do you want to go out tonight?” Luke asked Bane as they trooped out. “I mean, somewhere…kind of nice. Not to a pub like we usually do. What about the fancy place where we had our first date, after you got back from Anzat?”

      “I still say that wasn’t a date. Besides, it’s too public,” Bane argued. “All the gossip reporters hang out there.”

      “So?”

      “I thought we didn’t want them to know about us.”

      “I’ve been reconsidering that lately.” He shrugged with a nonchalance that she was pretty sure was forced. “I want to take you out someplace nice tonight.”

      She tried not to grin or look too enthusiastic, out of habit mostly. “All right, then. I suppose so. But we have to stop off at the Temple first so I can shower and change.”

      They looked up at the sound of rapid footsteps on the marble tiles of the hall behind them. It was one of the Chancellor’s office’s young clerical interns. Her name escaped Bane.

      “Sorry, Master Bane, but there was just an urgent call for you from the police,” she announced breathlessly. “They just took one of the New Sith apprentices into custody. You can pick her up down at their precinct near the business sector-“

      “’One of my…’ wait, did you just say ‘her’?” Bane’s pale red eyebrows knit. “Did they mention the name? I guess it wouldn’t be Torturian if it’s a ‘her’…that’s strange, though-“

      “The name was something like-“ The intern paused as she tried to wrap her lips around the unfamiliar syllables. “It sounded like…’Gaya Viviani.’”

      “ _Gaya Viviani_? Are you sure?” Bane demanded.

      The petite young female quailed slightly in the face of Bane’s vehemence. “That’s what it sounded like.”

      Shaking her head, Bane turned to Luke. “I think we’re going to have to postpone the fancy dinner. Sorry.”

     “That’s okay. I’ll come down there with you,” he assured her. “Wow, Gaya Viviani…I can’t imagine her in trouble with anyone. She’s…well, she just seems like such a nice girl.”

     “Yep,” Bane agreed absentmindedly. She also found it hard to believe that Gaya could be in trouble with the law. But then, it was possible. Since the disappearance of her stepfather, the girl had been dealing with a lot. And of course, if their theory about Ardan Teta turned out to be correct, she’d have to deal with even more. Bane sighed. The way things were going, it’d probably be a wonder if Gaya _didn’t_ snap.


	28. Civil Disobedience

        “I hope I remembered everything I had to do,” Gaya confessed. “I just have this feeling I forgot something important.”

       “No, you didn’t,” Jaina assured her. “This is going to be great. This is the coolest thing any friend of mine has ever done.”

       She looked at the other two, dutifully trudging along with them, just a step behind them on the narrow walkway. She wondered if either of them really understood what this event- a rally by the Diversity Alliance outside the local Sector Hall during the school board meeting- would mean to the people who conceived it, the people who attended- and, of course, to Gaya. She realized she would have to try again to explain the concept of civil disobedience to Linxo when they got back to the Temple that evening. Raised in a small, close-knit community in which, aside from a traditional matriarchy, there was very little centralized leadership, Linxo didn’t understand the need for people to take their complaints to the streets. For the Anzati, expressing dissent to one’s leaders was as simple as opening one’s mouth (or in the Anzatis’ case, forming words and concepts in your mind and transmitting them to those present).

        As for Cody…she knew there was no point even trying to make him understand what all this was about. It wasn’t even as if a part of him didn’t understand why people would do this- he understood, Jaina knew. But like others of his…well, why not call it “species”? That was what it was. Like others of his species, Cody was uncomfortable with the concept of questioning authority, even when it wasn’t him doing the questioning. Especially then. It was no surprise, Jaina mused- he’d been bred to be essentially cannon fodder or riot police, and neither one required a sense of independence or much critical thinking. Jaina reflected that this was why she was so uncomfortable around Cody, why something about his mere presence irked her. It wasn’t that he ever seemed to have a problem with Jaina’s own penchant for rebellion, but she never knew if he might start to have one. He was an enforcer of the system; she was its enemy. Like Master Bane (the Second, of course). Like her parents, back before they’d gotten so damn bourgeois.

       She wondered why he had agreed so readily to come with them, as soon as Gaya had invited him.

      Oh. Wait. As soon as _Gaya_ had invited him. Jaina’s jaw dropped as comprehension dawned. A second later, she felt a grin spread across her face. Well, good for Gaya. She hoped her friend could figure it out. It was funny- she hadn’t known clones could feel things like that for people.

 

      Linxo stuck close by Jaina as they walked through the city, gripping her hand tightly. “Feeling overwhelmed?” Jaina whispered to her.

     Linxo tried to smile. _Just a little,_ she replied to her girlfriend. She still wasn’t used to this crush of people, even after living on Coruscant for a year at the Temple. She knew it would be worse when they got to the rally. To distract herself, she observed the city. She liked to imagine Coruscant as one of the giant-tree forests on other worlds she’d learned about, with its buildings as massive trunks growing from deep below her, up almost farther than she could see. She didn’t mind that. And she thought that, despite the crowds, she could live permanently on Coruscant someday. She had a secret dream of finding an apartment with Jaina, in one of the scenic neighborhoods where fewer people walked. But close to the Opera House. Bane and Skywalker had taken some of both their apprentices on a ‘field trip’ there, for extra credit in their literature classes, and there Linxo had first dreamed of performing on its stage. But she would never tell anyone that. Her family needed her to become a New Sith and advocate for them in the Republic. She knew she couldn’t abandon them.

       The grounds opened up before them; Gaya gasped. There were more beings than she had ever seen together at once before. The air was loud and warm with their speech and body heat and energy. Most of them carried some kind of placard with a pro-KD pride slogan on it. Most were homemade signs on durasheets, or flags or banners of cloth. A few had gotten more modern, holding up lightweight plasma-screen digital message boards, or even- in the case of the truly technologically gifted- carrying around small holoprojectors that cast the message in the space above their heads.

       People with Krandyn’s did not often come together, especially not in large, overwhelming groups, Gaya knew. But they were also, as a rule, extremely persistent, and when they resolved to do something, they would do it. Now, she could feel that resolve, and felt pride overtake her anxiety.

       They all felt impressed by the organization of it. The center of the grounds had been rigged with a platform and sound equipment, with space around it for standing and camping. Around the edge of the space were canvas tents, where, Gaya explained, water and food would be distributed, as well as literature about the event.

       “Have you ever been to one of these before?” Jaina asked her as they sat down.

       Gaya shook her head. “No, but I’d like to go to others. Not just for this. I like the energy. I like bringing the issue out where people can’t ignore it.”

      “This one came out great,” Jaina assured her. “I mean, look how many people came. Great job.” It was true- around their area, others had set up chairs, blankets, or tarps, or were simply standing, facing the platform, where a testimonial was being projected.

      Gaya grinned. “I didn’t do very much. I just ran some errands for the volunteers that have been with the DA longer. But I learned to do some things with organization and stuff.”

       “Well, Linxo and I are going to get us all some water,” Jaina announced, and Gaya watched the girls move off toward one of the tarp canopies.

       Cody shifted. Gaya took a deep breath. “Jaina says you don’t like stuff like this. I’m sorry if this is making you uncomfortable.”

      He shook his head. “That’s all right. I’m becoming more comfortable with it. I have to be.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I’ve been researching my own kind, too. Many troops are becoming dissatisfied with the Empire. It started back with Order 66, but it has never been resolved. Master Bane has sources within the Imperial Army, and according to them there is some debate over what to do.”

      “But I thought…” Gaya struggled to find a non-offensive way to say it. “Well, I thought…I thought you guys couldn’t do things like that. I thought…they say you can’t.”

      “We used to think so too. And we are prone to taking orders, and it is difficult to go against the group or disobey authority. But we’re sentient beings, which means free will must exist. So we…they are talking.” He looked around. “This really isn’t bad at all. It’s not even disrupting traffic or bothering people or anything.”

       Gaya grinned again. Cody’s degree of empathy with random citizens never ceased to happily surprise her. Despite being rational, he thought of the many by instinct, rather than the few, or even himself. She wished she was more like that.

       She decided it was time to ask a question. She was aware of the damage it could do, but she had to ask; she had to _know._ “Cody, if we have time after we check back in to the Temple, and if the masters let us go back out and it’s not too late or anything…do you want to go out somewhere with me? Like, to a cinema or a café or something?” She wished Jaina would come back with the water; her throat kept getting dry. “I’ve got some money, if you don’t,” she added, mostly to fill the silence. “It’s okay.”

       He was quiet for a while, so long that she started to feel literally nauseous. At last, he replied slowly, “No, Gaya…but thanks. I like being your friend. I don’t want to ruin that.” He didn’t look at her.

        She waited for the heartache; it didn’t seem to come. Instead, she felt nothing. There was only a numbness in her chest. “That’s okay. That’s what I thought. No problem.”

       He looked, she thought, like maybe he wanted to say something. But he didn’t. She felt a tap on the shoulder. It was one of the DA interns, who smiled at her. “Come on up to the panel, Gaya. They’re introducing the people who made this happen. You should be up there with us.”

       Gaya searched for the appropriate response; she felt even slower than usual. “Are you sure? I didn’t do that much…and I haven’t been with the Alliance very long…”

       “Of course we are; come on! You don’t mind if I steal her, do you?” the intern asked Cody, who seemed utterly without a response.

       Gaya had a dim recollection that when a girl was rejected, she was supposed to want to do things like eat sucrose-heavy food and stay in bed with crappy romance novels or holofilms. Right now, the sucrose, her old poison, sounded only marginally appealing; the romantic tales not at all. What she really wanted was to go home- either to her mother’s apartment above the Kimorra tavern, or to the Temple, for rest and a few private moments with either of the Masters Bane; both women knew how to comfort her, each in her own way. Since neither of those were options right now, though, she decided what she most wanted was to be as far away from Cody as possible. “Okay, let’s go,” she told the intern, trying to smile.

       She marveled once more at the size and diversity of the crowd- she heard several non-Basic languages and dialects being spoken- as she followed the chipper intern- who did not have KD or any neurological differences, but was merely a sympathetic “normal” person, which probably accounted for her social ease and cheeriness- through it. They climbed onto the sound platform and Gaya took her place at the end of the line of DA members, interns, and volunteers. A small voice amplifier was being passed from person to person; she started mentally preparing what she would say when it reached her.

      At the nearest edge of the crowd, she noticed a few police vehicles and officers standing casually, watching the proceedings. As she watched, one ducked down into his speeder, presumably to hear some transmitted message on his com. “Why are there police here?” she whispered to the intern, whose dim Force-signature she could recognize easily, but whose name always escaped her.

      “Making sure we don’t cause any disturbances.” For once, her guide sounded less than chipper.

      “We’re not doing anything wrong, though. Under the constitution, we have a right to free assembly.”

      “In theory. We still had to have a permit for this, which has to be granted by the city, and we have to stay within the area specified on it.”

      The officers had begun to weave their way through the crowd. Gaya wondered idly who they were looking for, and what they would do when they found him or her. “So in theory,” she whispered, “The city could deny us a permit, and then we couldn’t protest.”

      The intern looked preoccupied. “I suppose so.”

       _So we really don’t have the right to assemble freely at all,_ thought Gaya, vowing to ponder this and decide if she was outraged about it later. Below them, the police had reached the platform and were pulling themselves up. The member making his speech was cut off as the crowd’s attentive hush splintered into murmurs of unease.

      The officer who seemed to be in charge addressed the assembled members. “We’re looking for a young human female named Gaya Viviani. I have orders to escort her down to the precinct, where she is wanted for questioning in relation to an open investigation.”

       “What kind of investigation?” asked one of the members.

       The officer folded his arms, as if his answer was being dragged from him. “Homicide.”

       Gaya thought briefly of running, but decided that was stupid. They would catch her eventually, and anyway she hadn’t actually done anything- or, to her knowledge, seen anything done. Except to those two kidnappers back on Tatooine, of course. And that had been another planet, and they’d been outlaws, and anyway Bane the First’s killings were never looked into. “Um, I’m Gaya Viviani,” she called, trying to sound helpful.

       The officer nodded. “We’re going to need you to come with us, Miss Viviani.”

      “Um, okay, but why? Who’s dead?” For a horrible two seconds, she thought it might be her mother. But no, they would have told her that straight away, she reassured herself. The same would be true if they had found Ardan’s body.

       “We need you to come with us,” he repeated.

       The member who had asked about the investigation, another face and Force signature Gaya was familiar with but could not yet pair with a name, said, “Then let her introduce herself, before she goes.”

       “Sir, she needs to-“

       “If you were arresting her,” the being interrupted, briefly but effectively fixing his stare on the officer, “You would have given her her rights. So she doesn’t technically have to go anywhere with you at all. So before she does, you can let her do this.”

      He put the amplifier into Gaya’s hand. Hesitantly, she held it up. The crowd was silent, but seemed to hum with anticipation. She tried to recall what the other members had started with. Hadn’t most of them just given their names and occupations? She could feel the officer’s impatience.

      She opened her mouth. For a moment, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to speak, but then the words began to come, as the protesters, members, and reporters looked on (one reporter having the foresight to record the scene holographically, to be shown later as an unexpectedly popular filler story on the HoloNet news broadcast), and as the officer and one of his colleagues began to hustle her off the stage.

      “My name is Gaya Viviani,” she announced into the amplifier. “And I’m an apprentice to the New Sith Order.”


	29. Harmless Fun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: some sizeist and ableist language.

       _“And stay out!”_

      Krix Graneel fell hard against the wall of the building on the other side of the narrow alley. He supposed he should be grateful he hadn’t fallen into the pile of garbage bags, although it might have been softer. At least this way he wouldn’t smell, and he could maybe pick up a girl later on. Sure he’d be bruised, but he could just tell her he’d been in a fight with a burly Imperial spy. _Two_ burly Imperial spies, possibly with Sith Lord powers.

      He looked back at the club owner. “Your loss, pal,” he growled. “My friends and I aren’t ever coming back here again.”

      “Your _friends_ are still in _school_ ,” the owner snapped back. “And so are you! Get off my property, and don’t bother coming back. Trouble follows you and your crowd like seeker droids.” He slammed the back door, hard. Krix actually heard the old metal frame clink as it trembled.

       Had Krix Graneel been imaginative enough for superstition, he would have mused that his luck had gone to the ninth Corellian Hell ever since he’d been suspended for that thing with that fat chick from his phys ed class at PS 180, Gaya Viviani. True, the suspension had only been for two days, not even close to his longest, which had been a whole month blessedly devoid of school. Krix didn’t really mind suspensions, but it was the principle of the thing. Two days was fair, Krix thought, considering Viviani had nearly electrocuted him at the time. She hadn’t meant to, of course. Their instructor had warned them about the girl’s condition, so that they’d be appropriately “sensitive”- she had Krandyn’s Disorder, which as far as Krix was aware meant she was some kind of retard. That was what had made screwing with her so much fun.

       He decided he’d had enough hard thinking for the night, and went to look for chicks. He’d always had a thing for brunettes; at first when Viviani had tried to ignore him and his friends’ antics, he’d actually wondered if she was playing hard to get, which, needless to say, had further pissed him off.

       He swung to the right and entered an alley. It occurred to him distantly that he wasn’t actually sure where he was, but, he decided, his gut had carried him this far in life, and it would carry him farther still. And his gut said there were girls this way. Brunettes, his gut assured him. It had almost taken on a silent voice of its own; a silky, soothing voice that made Krix even more anxious to follow it. _Brunettes. Petite humanoid brunettes,_ it murmured, urging him onward. _Alcohol and spice and death sticks, as well. All good things in the world. All for you._

       He reacted when he was grabbed in the gloom by the unseen pair of hands, but he’d already managed to down a couple drinks at the club before the bouncer had recognized him and they’d taken a closer look at his fake ID. Besides, he couldn’t find what he was trying to punch at. At first he thought that his assailant was so fast, he seemed to be trying to punch the night air itself. At length, he realized that, impossibly, he _was_ punching the air. There was no attacker- or if there was, he or she was somehow not physically present in the fight.

       He tried to scream as the invisible force lifted his still-resistant body further from the ground. As he opened his mouth, he felt his windpipe constrict until he could only gasp, blood pounding in his ears. _Don’t scream,_ advised the inner voice, which Krix was starting to suspect was not in fact his gut at all. The hold on his throat relaxed and faded. _If you try to scream again, I will take hold of your throat again. And this time I will not let go until you are dead._

       “Okay,” Krix whispered, nodding vigorously. “I won’t.”

       He was propelled through an open window, and deposited hard on a duracrete floor. Through the dim city light that leaked in through the window, which clicked shut and locked behind him, he perceived two other figures crouching on the floor. He realized, with a cold chill, that they were his crew.

       “What do you want?” he asked the room at large. “What do you want with us, man?”

       A beam of light from a passing airbus fell on the figure shrouded in shadow. Peering into the dark, Krix stared at the unexpected presence before him.

       “Please,” said his mouth at last, feeling dry. “Please let us go.”

       Inside his head, and outside it too, he heard the figure laughing, and he began to sweat.


	30. Law and Order

        Gaya wished, despite herself, that Cody was with her right now.

        Primarily this was because he was the only person she knew who had ever been anything close to arrested before. Of course, at PS 180, she’d seen a few arrests, some in the middle of class- and both students and a few teachers had been the ones “wanted for questioning”- but Gaya had never hung out with that crowd, even back when she had had friends in her classes.

        After they- after _she_ \- had found Cody, seemingly abandoned and half-starved, living in the old Jedi Temple, apparently a sacrifice by the Emperor to Bane the First, who had decided to keep him alive for reasons of her own, Cody had been detained as an Imperial trooper at this very precinct. Not for long, and they hadn’t done anything even remotely bad to him, but he still might know how this would go, and he would be able to calm her down. As it was, Gaya couldn’t even begin to think what this could be about. It couldn’t be Krandyn’s- or rally-related, nor could it be New Sith-related, since no one but her had been arrested.

        She really wished Cody could be here. There was something soothing to her about his presence; she reflected; that was true to some extent of all her friends and especially her family, and of both Master Banes, now that she came to think of it. But it was different with him; he really did seem as if he would protect her, even when she knew she didn’t or shouldn’t need protection.

        Of course, that was before he had…well, before he’d rejected her. She had done her best to mentally prepare herself for the distinct possibility- probability, more like, she thought- that he would say no, but it didn’t seem to help. She realized that the prospect of being just friends hadn’t seemed so bad before because then, there was the unconscious hope that that might someday change. Now, what she was experiencing, she realized, was the death of that hope. It brought not pain, but a cold feeling of despair that made her want to do something- anything- to change his mind. Or to get revenge, even though she knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. But emotionally, it seemed to be a choice between breaking down in tears and committing herself to the prospect of being alone for the rest of her life, or blaming him and being angry with him for his inability to recognize what an awesome girlfriend she’d make.

        She was happy when the cop came in, because at least it was a distraction. “Hello, Gaya,” he told her kindly. Unlike most Guards of the Republic, he wore civilian clothes and was probably- from all the crime shows she and Ardan had watched together- some kind of detective.

Through the Force, she was able to probe his mind- it was anything but weak, but he wasn’t Force-sensitive and so couldn’t really block her. She tried to hide her reaction at what she found. _He thinks I did…what?!_

      Struggling not to assert her innocence immediately- that would make her look more guilty- she sat back. “Hi. I’d like my Mom to be present, please. And Master Bane. That’s Niama Viviani and Darth Bane.” She gave him both addresses.

       “We know how to find them,” he intoned, looking a lot less kind. “Gaya, don’t you want to know why you’re-“

       “I want to talk to them first,” Gaya insisted. She knew how this stuff went. “I have a right to have them present when you question me, and if I can’t talk to them, I’m not going to talk to you.”

       “Gaya, listen to me,” he said paternally, leaning in slightly. “Once we get them involved, they’re going to want to get a lawyer down here, and then it’s just going to get all complicated”-

       “I want them present,” Gaya demanded, and then, because she was starting to get angry, added, “And I’ve watched HoloNet crime stuff before, so I know that when cops say that it just means they want to interrogate you without anyone advising you on what to say. That you’re even trying that is insulting. I’m not stupid.”

        “Do you need advice on what to tell me?”

       “I want my Mom and Master Bane.”

 

        They looked at the image the detective projected before them. At last, Niama said, “Oh, my god.” Then, she pulled herself together. “What makes you think Gaya knows anything about any of this?”

       The detective smirked at them. “She’s the only common thread linking these boys to Eirelan Starkeller. Besides, all the wounds found on the bodies were made by a lightsaber.”

       Niama’s horror was swiftly turning to rage. “And you think my daughter just went and killed all these people? That’s all the evidence you need to believe that?”

       “And, just to be clear, it is not only all the evidence you need,” interjected Bane. “It is, in fact, all the evidence you _have_. Because the, uh, ‘the forensics aren’t back yet.’” She gave the detective an incredulous look, which he was able to withstand.

       “She has a motive, too,” he replied, looking stung. “Those boys were harassing her back at PS 180-“

       Niama gave a sarcastic laugh. “I love how someone’s finally admitting that it even happened. I guess it only becomes an issue if someone dies and there’s a chance the school could get into any trouble, right?”

      “And,” he continued, tactfully ignoring her, “Maybe she thought Starkeller should have backed her up.” He glowered at Bane. “That’s what you people believe in, right? Vengeance?”

       Bane grinned in mock amusement. “You know, lieutenant, I just love getting back from a dangerous mission in the Outer Rim in which I defended your freedom not to live in a galactic police state, and then getting to listen to you slam my religion and accuse my apprentice of multiple homicides. Would you mind terribly if I asked you when any of these killings took place?”

       “Starkeller was found a month ago,” he informed them grudgingly. He named the approximate date.

       “Well, that’s easy, then,” Bane countered. “Gaya was on Tatooine with me and Commander Skywalker that entire week.” She glared at him. “You don’t trust me worth a damn, but I assume you’ll trust _his_ word?”

       The detective sagged slightly. “The others were only a week ago.” _She still could’ve killed them,_ was the hopeful implication.

       “I don’t know what to say about that,” Gaya admitted. “I guess I was at the Temple, you know, studying and going to bed- oh, wait,” she remembered. “All but one of those nights I was at the Diversity Alliance headquarters. Doing stuff for the rally they had today. You can talk to the people there. They’ll remember me.” She paused. “The one other night…yeah. I would’ve been in my room at the New Sith Temple.”

       Niama gave him a disbelieving look. “Honestly, did you even bother to check _any_ of this before you dragged my daughter down here?”

       The detective looked briefly down at the table. “We were concerned she could leave the planet,” he muttered, in the tone of one who understands that he is fundamentally without a leg to stand on.

       “I see,” intoned Bane, regarding him stonily. The detective sunk slightly down on the chair that he had, until recently, been straddling jauntily.

       Another officer came in, handing the detective a flimsiplast printout. He studied it, and a resigned, almost dignified look came to his face. “The forensic results,” he said levelly, almost nobly, holding the dossier out to Bane, who had the grace to accept it and read the printout inside without smirking.

       “May we assume,” she said at last, setting it back down on the table, “that Gaya is free to go?”

        “Yes,” he replied calmly. “I apologize for any inconvenience we’ve caused her. Or either of you.”

 

       “Although,” he rallied as he showed them out. “I don’t know if you caught it on that readout, but it looks like the person who did this stuff…obviously, it’s not her. We found a Y chromosome, so it was a male. But the DNA is similar.” He turned to Niama. “We might be asking Mr. Viviani down for a DNA test. I want to prepare you for that.” Beside her, Gaya felt Bane stiffen to attention at this piece of new information.

       Niama blanched with rage. “I don’t kriffing believe this. I’m sorry, I’ve got to get out of here.” She hugged Gaya. “I love you, honey. Call me tonight, okay?”

      “Sure, Mom.” Gaya turned as her mother left and drew closer to the conversation between Bane and the detective.

      Bane gave him a look that was nearly sympathetic. “There is no Mr. Viviani, Mister Tact. The closest thing was a man called Ardan Teta. He vanished a few months back. Your precinct is supposed to be investigating his disappearance.” She drew closer. “Now, I don’t want to beat around the bush with you, lieutenant. We both know this is not the first time you’ve… _jumped_ _the ion cannon somewhat_ in pursuit of a confession, am I right?”

      Gaya didn’t register any change in the man’s face, but she heard him hiss, “How did you-“

       “I’m a Sith. We always know. Now, I’m guessing that the thing you really don’t need right now is another complaint lodged against you. I can make that happen. Or, rather, not happen. Would you like that, lieutenant?”

       The detective inhaled deeply. “What do you want?”

       “The DNA from the crime scene, shipped to the labs at the New Jedi Temple. We don’t have fancy forensic labs over at the New Sith. Not all of it, though. I have no interest in any kind of cover-up. Just samples. Enough for a…oh, a standard paternity test, I’d say.”

       The detective chewed his lip. “What if I say no?”

       “Then I’ll have your badge,” said Bane calmly. “That phrase is a HoloNet cliche, I know, but in this case, it will be true. And I might not be satisfied with just the badge, either.” She grinned. “You said it yourself, lieutenant: we Sith have a thing for vengeance.”

       He was silent for a few minutes. At last, he muttered, “Okay. Expect them tonight, around midnight.”

      She nodded and swept past him. “Excellent. Come, Gaya.”

      “Why do we need the DNA samples, Master?” Gaya asked later, as they rode the familiar airbus back to the Crimson Corridor, where, due to the reasonable rent deal the New Republic had gotten, the New Sith Temple was located.

      Bane shook her head. “Honestly, Gaya, I’m not sure. I just have a feeling.” She paused, and then explained, “When we recovered Pestage a few months back, Gaya, he provided us with some information about a secret plan of Emperor Palpatine’s.”

       “No offense, Master, but how could this relate to that at all?”

       “Outwardly, it doesn’t. And it may not,” replied Bane cryptically. “But I’ve got a feeling. Somehow, it’s connected. All of it; everything that’s happened. Maybe even Ardan’s disappearance. Somehow, it’s all connected.”


	31. The Reception

        “I still don’t really understand why your mom wants me to be there,” Gaya remarked. “Can you zip me up?”

        Jaina obliged. “Well, I heard Aunt Bane and Uncle Luke talking-“

        “By the way, why do you call her your aunt? Sorry for interrupting, it’s just I’ve been curious.”

        “It’s just this thing that my mom says you do with people who are really close friends of the family,” Jaina explained. “Anyway, I overheard them. Apparently a bunch of people recorded the footage of you getting taken away by the cops at the rally. It’s on the HoloNet. I think Mom thinks it could end up being bad press for the government somehow. So she wants to make it seem like it was all just a big misunderstanding.”

        “Well, it basically was. I mean, your mom had nothing to do with it. It was just some police guy getting, like, overzealous.”

       “Yeah, but she’s worried it could end up being made into a thing about disabled people getting abused or New Sith causing trouble or even the public schools failing or Coruscant becoming a police state. I mean, a lot of people don’t know this, because the HoloNet doesn’t cover it, but there’s this relatively big opposition movement brewing. Not Imperials or anything. Just people…objecting, you know. To how things are.” She straightened up beside Gaya. “Take a look.”

       Gaya turned to stare at her reflection in the somewhat cloudy full-length mirror of the girls’ locker room at the New Sith Temple. She was…surprised.

       She didn’t wear dresses much. When you were a New Sith apprentice and a nerd who had never been exactly in demand for dates, you didn’t. She also generally preferred comfortable, practical clothing, for sensory reasons. The last fancy dress she had worn was the dress she’d been given for Niama and Ardan’s wedding, at which she had been her mother’s bridesmaid. And that had been years ago.

       But when Chancellor Organa had invited her, along with Bane and Master Skywalker, to the reception, Bane had taken her to the plus-sized dress place where she went on the rare occasions when she bought clothes, and now Gaya found herself wearing a full-length gown that somehow seemed to fit like a glove. It was a rich deep blue-violet color. It was probably the most beautiful thing she’d ever worn.

       “Thanks,” she murmured at last, remembering that Jaina was there. “For helping me get ready. And for letting me borrow your earrings.”

       “No problem.” Jaina grinned. “Let’s walk by the guys’ rooms. Maybe Cody will be there.” Gaya had told her about asking him out at the rally. “We can show him what he’s missing.”

 

* * *

 

       At the reception, after the thrill of wearing the dress had worn off somewhat, Gaya began to realize that she was bored. She was years younger than everyone else there- the second youngest people were Ranjana/Darth Scathach, and the New Jedi Ken, who kept trying to wear down Ranjana into dancing or having a drink with him. For a while, she and Ranjana had talked, but now Ranjana was spending most of her energy avoiding Ken and helping Bane with what Gaya had mentally dubbed the pro-Tusken lobby. Everyone else was too old and dignified-looking to try to start a conversation with.

        She turned to Bane’s handbag, on the table next to where she sat. Bane’s comlink was going off. After looking around and not seeing the master, Gaya took a deep breath and answered it tentatively. “Um, hello?”

        It was Master Witicca. “Gaya? Where’s Master Bane?”

       “I’m not sure. I’m looking for her.”

      “Okay. If you see her, just let her know the test results are back, and there’s been a new development with the extra sample we-“ He paused. “Never mind. Just tell her the test came back and she needs to call me back as soon as possible. She’ll understand. Okay?”

      “Yes, Master.” He terminated the call and Gaya put the comlink back. Taking the handbag with her, since even at a government reception it seemed like a bad idea to leave it unattended, she went to look for Bane.

 

* * *

 

       Bane was trying her damnedest not to giggle. It was a horrible thing to admit to herself. She comforted herself with the fact that she wasn’t having the urge to giggle because of Luke’s romantic prowess, exactly- her neck was just extremely ticklish. Yes. That was what it was.

        “There are dozens of reporters trying to sneak in here,” she hissed instead. “They could see us.”

       “I don’t care. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. Listen…Meargeode.”

       His use of her Tusken name- and his surprisingly accurate pronunciation- swept whatever Bane had been going to say next from her mind.

       “You remember on Tatooine, before we went down into the tunnels, when your grandmother and I talked privately?”

       “Yes, of course I-“

       “Well, she gave me this.” He fished around in the pockets of his dress jacket for a minute, and produced a richly carved silver ring set with an iridescent milk-white stone.

        “But that’s the ring my grandfather gave her as part of his dowry to her.” Bane frowned. “She was going to give it to my mother at her wedding, but of course because of my father that never…why the hell did she give it to you?”

       Luke paused for a long moment. Then, he opened his mouth carefully.

       “Master Skywalker!” An aide rushed from the hall out to the alcove where the two of them were standing. “And Master Bane,” she added courteously. “Chancellor Organa needs you right away! Someone’s attacked the two Temples, and now there’s some man transmitting live over the HoloNet, saying he’s Emperor Palpatine!”


	32. Ardan's Daughters

        Gaya was staring at the wall when there was a knock on her door.

        She had homework to do. Or studying; you could never be too prepared for class. Or she could have just read.

        She didn’t seem to be able to concentrate on anything right now. If she tried, she felt sick to her stomach.

        A few hours ago, her biggest complaint had been that she was bored at a reception. She hadn’t known how lucky she was.

        _I should have brought Jaina with me. Her and Cody. Chad, even. We should have all come. Or I should have stayed with them. I know I wouldn’t have been much help, but at least we’d be together…_

       What was she going to say to Chancellor Organa?

       She answered the door, dimly aware that she was still wearing her reception gown. She hadn’t even been able to focus long enough to change clothes.

       _What if they die? What if I never see them again? Oh please don’t let that happen, not just for my sake but also because it would kill Jaina’s parents…_

       It was Master Bane. She looked like Gaya felt. “Gaya, we need to talk to you.”

        “Is it about…about Jaina?” Gaya heard herself ask as they walked. Her voice sounded scratchy with the effort of not crying. “Jaina and everybody else?”

        “Yeah. Yes, it is.” Bane drew a deep, shaky breath. “I should have told you about it before. _We_ should have. We should have picked a better time than this. Gaya, I’m sorry. I should’ve thought…but I didn’t know he’d try this. None of us did.”

       The empty classroom was lit jarringly by the Temple’s typically cheap old fluorescents. Blinking, Gaya sat down at one of the desks and waited. Both Jaina’s parents were there, as well as Commander Skywalker and a suavely dressed man, looking just as frantic as the rest of them, who Gaya recognized as Chad’s father.

        Bane walked slowly to the central desk. “Chancellor Organa, Mr. Solo, Master Skywalker, and Mr. Divinian. As you know, three hours ago, both the New Jedi and the New Sith Temples were attacked by Imperial troops-“

       “How were they able to breach Coruscant’s airspace?” demanded Chad’s father.

       “We’re still figuring that out. It looks like there were Imperial sleeper agents at work.”

       Chancellor Organa shook her head. “This is going to mean a complete investigation of our security forces- law enforcement, military, corrections-“

        “Speaking of corrections, Pestage has disappeared, too,” interjected Master Skywalker. “The prison warden called an hour ago. He was taken to the infirmary with some alleged stomach complaints, and from there they had him away in an emergency transport before anyone realized what was going on.”

        Bane paused, and then continued. “As you know, these forces were able to overpower both our orders’ masters, and to abduct Jaina and Jacen Solo, as well as Chad Divinian and Cody of Kamino.

        “As I’m sure you’re all aware, we’re still uncovering new information about their kidnapping. Normally, Mr. Divinian, we wouldn’t share what we know so far with a civilian, especially considering its inflammatory nature, but since your son is one of the missing, we thought you should know.” She took another moment, and then concluded, “We believe Emperor Palpatine is behind the attacks, and the abductions. We don’t know why yet-“

        “Are you…is this some kind of joke?” Divinian blustered. “I have to tell you, Chancellor, I’d heard from my son that _this woman_ ”- he indicated Bane- “was several cards short of a Sabacc deck, but this is just-“

        “Lune,” said Jaina’s mother quietly to him. “Sit down and listen to what she has to say.”

        Bane sat. “A few months ago, Gaya Viviani there told me that her stepfather Ardan Teta, up until then a devoted family man, had gone missing. More recently, we discovered files about secret, special cloning facilities. We discovered that these facilities were used to create clone bodies for Palpatine’s spirit to inhabit in the event of his death. When we found the facilities, one body was unaccounted for. We haven’t even told the Senate that yet.

       “That’s not all we’ve learned. We performed a standard paternity test using DNA recovered from the Teta-Viviani family apartment. It was Ardan’s. We tested it against my DNA and my brother’s. We also did a paternity test with the DNA recovered from the murders of Eirelan Starkeller and Krix Graneel and his friends- Gaya’s old social worker, and the boys who used to harass her.

       “Those murders were committed by the same person whose DNA we got from the apartment. The person who was shown to be my and Triclops’ father by the test. The person who’s a genetic copy of Palpatine…Ardan Teta.”

       For a moment, Gaya felt as though nothing had changed from the time before Bane had said those words. Then, she registered a stab of nausea in her stomach, and realized that her chest felt tight. She was breathing- she was pretty sure she was breathing- but somehow the air wasn’t reaching her lungs, and she couldn’t get enough of it; couldn’t take it in fast enough.

       She felt Bane’s hand gripping her arm. “Gaya. Breathe. Concentrate on it. Concentrate on each breath. Come on, Gaya. Feel yourself breathing in. Now out.”

       Slowly, Gaya felt her breathing rate decrease to normal. “Sorry,” she gasped.

       “Bane, are you sure we have to do this?” asked Master Skywalker, brows knitting.

       “There’s no time to wait for her to process it,” Bane told him. “Gaya, I’ll give you a few minutes, but…”

       Gaya sat back and nodded, willing herself to think of nothing except the taste of fresh air in her lungs. “It’s okay. I understand. The longer we wait, the farther away they get.”

       “That’s right.” Bane took a deep breath. “Gaya, we’ve talked it over. You need to go after them.”

        Gaya willed herself to keep breathing slowly, steadily. “Alone?”

      “Yes. You can do it.”

      “Why me?”

       Bane looked at Master Skywalker for a moment, and then said, “We think there’s a chance…you’re the only one he wouldn’t kill.”

       “But he’s Emperor Palpatine really- isn’t that what you found out, that Mom and I were just covers for him-“

       “Yes,” Bane cut her off. “But we did another paternity test, Gaya.”

       Gaya knew. She knew without even needing to hear the rest. “It said I was his too, didn’t it?”

       “Yes.” And she’d always felt that to be true, deep down, but it was impossible…

       “That just proves it, then,” she said instead. “Your lab’s…paternity test machine or whatever made a mistake. It’s got to be wrong. Because he can’t be.”

      “We did multiple tests using different lab equipment,” Master Skywalker said almost apologetically. “Enough tests to make the probability of false positives…really close to zero. Really, really close to zero.”

       Gaya fought the returning sense of nausea. “So why can’t you go?” she heard herself snap at Bane. “He’s your father too, right?”

        “He never liked me,” said Bane simply.

       “Well, he never liked me either, even if I am somehow his kid, it doesn’t change anything-“

       “Gaya, I knew him,” Bane said as kindly as she could. “He could have put a lot less work into charming your mother. Really he could. I like Niama, but he’s a truly skilled manipulator and she was lonely. I’ve seen him lavish effort on both of you- especially you- that he never gave anyone else that he used. I’m not going to stand here and tell you that I’m sure. But it’s our best chance.”

       Suddenly Gaya just wanted to sleep. Her gown now felt hot, heavy and constrictive, itchy even. She needed to be alone. She needed to go home. But… _Jaina and Cody- well, and Jacen and Chad- they need me…_

_Besides, maybe this is better- I’ll go, and Ardan won’t even be involved, and at least I’ll know for sure then, I won’t have to spend the rest of my life wondering, and they’ll see they were wrong about him…_

       Defeated, she heard herself mutter, “Tell me what you want me to do.”


	33. The Citadel

       Extreme anxiety had the tendency to make Gaya sick, sometimes physically. She remembered she’d gotten sick to her stomach the day she’d left PS 180, as soon as they’d gotten home. At the time, she’d been dealing with the aftereffects of the adrenaline rush that had come from defending herself (accidentally) from Krix and his gang with Force lightning, as well as the fear of punishment, the terror and frustration of being physically bound with the restraints from the school’s special education department, and most of all, her shame at her ultimate failure at normality and neurotypicality. It had all been too much.

         Now, she wondered what Ardan- she couldn’t bring herself to call him anything else, at least not in her head- had thought of her then. It sickened her to think that he’d witnessed it; that he’d been privy to all the moments of weakness, humiliation, emotionality and ineptitude that had more or less marked Gaya’s development. She thought bitterly that Ardan, who had looked so concerned and even protective (it disgusted her now), had probably been making every effort not to crack up. It was probably the sort of thing he would find really amusing- people like him, Gaya knew from experience, secretly felt weak, and therefore liked nothing better than to kick someone who was already down. The Sith in particular seemed to attract that type- those with a hole inside them, constantly searching for things- power, in their case- to fill it with. People with that emptiness didn’t have to be evil like Ardan, of course- most New Sith people weren’t, as far as Gaya could tell- but a lot of them seemed to turn out that way.

       Emotionality and ineptitude…before this year, Gaya never would have realized that she thought of herself, unconsciously, as a naturally incompetent person. Because of the Krandyn’s, she’d always had trouble with everything from flexibility to change to processing, and she supposed that somewhere along the way, others’ reactions to this had directed her own. When she looked at her career at the Temple rationally, she was far from inept. At some things she was better than most of her peers, and even in her most challenging subjects, physical education for instance, she was either average or only marginally below it. She worked hard, too, which, she realized, was more than could be said for some of the others, for example Chad. Yet she saw herself as a basically untalented person with brief periods of competence, not as the generally successful person she actually was.

         She wondered momentarily if that was Ardan’s fault. Had he done something- some subtle abuse she was too young to recognize- to plant that seed in her mind? Or had he done something through the dark side, a kind of slow poisoning through the Force? But even as she wondered it, she knew it wasn’t that. It didn’t need to be. It was the Krandyn’s, and always had been.

        _Why the hell am I thinking this now? Uh, well, gee, Gaya, maybe it’s because your mind is tired of trying to process the fact that Ardan was the dictator of the galaxy in his past life._ Gaya nodded at this; she looked up at the Red Guard standing next to her in the shuttle, and realized that to him, it probably looked like she was carrying on some kind of conversation with herself. Between that and her nervous stimming, he was going to have some great stories to tell his other guard friends, she thought sourly. And then she wondered, _Why should I care what some random Imperial thinks of me?_

       The thoughts of guards and Imperials nudged her memory; hadn’t there been stormtroopers with them? Yes, behind her seat. Slowly and carefully she turned and addressed one. She found them less creepy than the Red Guards, because they’d patrolled Coruscant as law enforcement and she had often seen them before the Alliance’s victory, and because after knowing Cody, she could be certain that they did in fact have faces under there somewhere.

       “Um, excuse me,” she said, her voice seeming loud in the silent shuttle. “I’m, um, not sure which unit you’re with, but, um…I know this guy who’s a clone and he used to serve in…I don’t know the number exactly, but it was the same unit as a guy called Burninator, and it was the unit that the original Commander Cody used to be in, if that helps. Anyway, I don’t know if you’ll be able to do this, but if you get a chance, could you maybe contact his unit and just tell them he’s okay? Like, he’s not dead or a prisoner or anything…until now, I guess. He’s a prisoner now, here. He was fine, anyway.” She sighed. “I’m…I’m going to try to make sure that he’ll keep being fine.” Cody had once told her that most Imperial troops were surprisingly close knit, with secret names, rules, and methods of communication that most Imperial officers spent their whole lives unaware of, a culture that had evolved due to the extreme team mentality cultivated in Imperial clones from the moment of their birth, as well as the savagery of the Clone Wars. Gaya hoped that somehow the message of Cody’s relative safety could be passed along, in case the other men in his unit were worried about him or thought he was dead.

       For a moment she wondered if he had heard, if she shouldn’t have said so much in front of the Red Guards, if he could even get the message to Cody’s unit. Then, she thought she saw him nod briefly, almost imperceptibly, and she turned back around.

       Cody was here somewhere. She could feel him, and Jaina, and she could even vaguely feel Jacen and Chad, though their Force signatures were less familiar. She tried not to think about Cody, even now. In the tiny part of her mind not occupied with this mission or feelings of intense shock, she admitted to herself that she was constructing a fantasy where Cody fell madly in love with her as a result of her rescuing him. She tried to stop that thought process; she couldn’t deal with more disappointment right now.

       Out the window, it was raining. Here, the rain, like everything else including the moist, somewhat thick, almost clammy atmosphere itself, was tinted green, giving the actually quite beautiful (if dangerous) illusion that small green gems were falling from the sky. At least that was nice. On Coruscant, the rain had been nothing so much as a damp, foul-smelling mist that could corrode metal over time and was occasionally punctuated by pelletlike, swollen drops of icy water that seemed strategically angled to hit pedestrians and speeder pilots right in the eye.

       Thinking of Coruscant made her think of her mother. Master Bane and the others would have told her by this time; it was too late for her to do anything about the plan. Part of Gaya wished her mother could be with her; most of her was glad she wasn’t. It would be just too humiliating for her mother to have to look at Ardan and speak to him; after all, as bad as this all was for Gaya, Niama was the one who had married him. Gaya bit her lip; the thought of him secretly laughing at her mother, over her tiny business and attempts at writing, while pretending to be in love with her, was just too much.

       The Citadel loomed before them. Gaya, who had once been inside the old Imperial palace on Coruscant, was surprised at it. The old palace had been outwardly similar to the images she had seen of the old Sith temples from Bane the First’s time- a complex of several pyramids atop a high foundation platform. Inside, she recalled, had been lavish, so opulent it made Sate Pestage’s apartment on the base look like some homeless person’s duraplast crate. She recalled finding it ironic and a little hypocritical that the language of the tour she, Niama, and Ardan had taken was careful to denounce Palpatine’s regime, yet seemed to marvel at and admire his lifestyle, and that of the other Imperial elite. But the whole place had been heavy with tradition; that of the Sith in its structure, and that of the galaxy’s upper class (in particular that of Naboo, the Emperor’s home planet) in its interior.

       There was nothing traditional about the Citadel. It was constructed of some kind of reddish metal, and clashed slightly with its verdant location. It had no appreciable architectural features- in fact, there was something industrial about it. It was an egg-shaped structure supported improbably and somehow grotesquely on a longer, much narrower shaft. Its “head” seemed to tilt at such an angle that it appeared to glare redly down at its surroundings. Gaya felt immediately that the sense of foreboding- partly due to the shadows that surrounded it in the Force- she had had since first approaching Byss was suddenly enhanced by about a thousand. She knew, as surely as she had ever known anything in her life, that she did not want to go in there.

       She took another deep breath and tried to swallow her sudden nausea. Ever since she had been sent onto the planet in a smaller shuttle from a diplomatic New Republic ship, she had been dreading this moment. She knew the mission objective: to free the other apprentices, and to do her best to help apprehend Ardan using any means necessary. But she had no plan. She had never really been able to convince Ardan to do anything he didn’t want to do.

       She looked up at Ardan’s Citadel, and realized how much she wished there was a plan to follow. She always felt better when she had a plan.


	34. Reunion

        _The weird thing about this place,_ thought the part of Gaya’s mind currently trying to calm down the rest of her mind by distracting it, _is that it looks way bigger from the inside._ She’d just been escorted- her status was apparently some weird combination of “guest” and “prisoner,” judging by her guards’ behavior- through yet another mostly empty, high-ceilinged room. She recalled that her apartment back on Coruscant had been small and cluttered with various reading material, in primitive codex-form and on discs, chips, and drives; here, and to some extent at Jaina’s house, between the sheer size of the rooms and the organization of the objects in them, there was the impression of a lot of empty space. Perhaps, thought Gaya, that was one way of showing your wealth and power- you could afford to waste space.

         This room was bigger, darker, and more impressive than the rest. It featured a giant circular window of the type that Gaya had always liked, up until now, and before it was a chair. The chair itself sat atop a tall, steep-looking dais. This room was probably the throne room, thought Gaya, or some such thing. It looked important.

         To her surprise the chair was unoccupied, and she was marched through this room, as well. At last they seemed to arrive at their destination- a much smaller room that, if Gaya’s mental floor plan of this place was correct (which she was not prepared to bet money on), might be behind the throne room. It was more brightly lit and less imposing; it didn’t even contain a throne or any kind of console. It appeared to be a sitting room of some kind, like the room Jaina’s parents had parties in, before dinner was ready and everyone moved to the dining room. Feeling perplexed, Gaya sank onto one of the couches, while the stormtroopers left and the red guards took up positions in each of the room’s corners.

        The room was silent; this whole place was silent, except for the occasional echo of feet on tiles. Gaya fought the urge to take out her reader from her pack- they had let her keep it, although they took the Temple-assigned lightsaber- and select a book. It would calm her down, but it would also distract her, she knew. She had to focus on the mission. What to do now? She had to find out where the prisoners were kept; more specifically, where Jaina, Cody, and the others were being held. That would be relatively easy; easier, anyway, than her other task.

 _If he’s going to listen to you, you can’t alienate him,_ Master Bane had told her. _Believe me, I know all the things you’re going to want to say to him. I know how he gets under your skin, and I know how he gets inside your mind. You have to resist. You have to make him trust you._

        “Hello, Gaya.” She felt herself getting short of breath again, as she heard that voice. _He sounds like…Ardan. Gods, he sounds normal._

 _What am I supposed to say? “Nice armed Citadel you’ve got here”? I’m going to be all awkward with him- didn’t sending a person who has terrible social skills at the best of times for this send up any red flags for Master Bane?_ She looked up as calmly as she could, trying to keep her mind blank; he could probably read it at least a little if he tried. “Um…hi.”

        She was aware of the awkward pause- the first of many, she was sure- and felt a sense of surprise that he seemed to be expecting her to say something more. At last, he seemed to get the message that there wasn’t going to be anything else. “Leave us,” he told the guards.

        He smiled at her as he sat down across from her, and everything about him, except maybe his new robes, was _Ardan_. “I suppose this is all a bit…difficult to process at the moment, isn’t it, Gaya?”

        “Um…sort of, yeah.” What answer was he expecting?

       “I’m sure you have some questions for me,” he prompted gently, because Ardan always knew how to get her to start talking. “I’ll certainly do my best to answer them as well as I can without jeopardizing the security of this operation.”

       “I…um…well, I mean don’t you think you kind of ‘jeopardized’ the operation when you attacked both Temples and then bragged about it on the HoloNet?”

       He nodded. “That’s true. Certainly a bit flashier than my usual style, wasn’t it…but I do find I have so much more energy now. And of course, I needed to get a message out to you and your mother.”

        Gaya decided to abandon whatever game she had even been considering trying to play. This was just far too weird. She actually wondered momentarily if it was a dream. “How…um…how are you going to be…handling this whole…situation? As far as Mom is concerned?”

         “Well, I hope she will be joining us here as soon as possible,” he said matter-of-factly, as if this was only common sense. “I have been considering how best to achieve that. It’s a difficult situation, because, as you rightly pointed out, Gaya, I behaved a bit recklessly on Coruscant. It may- it _will_ be difficult to spirit your mother offplanet as I managed to do with…your peers.”

        Gaya decided to go for broke. “Um, well, you know, it might help if, um, if you released a couple of people. I mean, you could do this thing where you would, I don’t know, exchange Mom for them, or something? Like a prisoner exchange. Maybe Jaina and Jacen, at least to start with?”

        He sighed heavily, looking weary and almost amused. “I’m afraid not, Gaya. That’s why your sister sent you, isn’t it?”

         _My sister? Oh, right._ “Well, yeah. To be honest, she thought you might hesitate to kill me, as opposed to her or someone else.”

         “Well, she was right on that count.” He rubbed a temple, Ardan-like. “Gaya, I have made mistakes where Mara-Jade is concerned. But you must understand that things are different between us- you, your mother, and I- than they ever were with her. From the very beginning.”

       “Why?”

        “It is truly a long story.” He shook his head. “Another time. Perhaps when you’re older.”

        “What’s going to happen to my friends?”

        “They are extremely talented. Much like you. I have no intention of hurting them unless my hand is forced,” he told her reassuringly. “I think they could be very useful.”

        “They’re not useful. They’re people.”

       He smiled again, sadly. “Another thing you may understand better in just a few more years.”

       Gaya felt anger flood her system in a rush. “Well, that’s _bull_ , Ardan- or whatever I’m supposed to call you now. I’m old enough _now_. I’m _sixteen!_ I mean I realize my, my prefrontal cortex or my frontal lobe, that’s it, isn’t finished developing yet or whatever, but _come_ _on_ , Ardan or whoever you are. I understand plenty of what’s going on here, and anyway, this is _crazy!_ I mean, you’re telling me you’re really Emperor Palpatine and you’re essentially taking me and Mom away to your castle, and you’re acting like we’re talking about…I don’t know, puberty or moving to another apartment or something!” Gaya leaned forward. “I mean, do you have any idea what this is going to be like for us? Especially if you…if you succeed? We just got comfortable- school is going great for me, and I have actual friends, and the Kimorra is starting to really turn a profit now, and-“

        “Gaya, you don’t need to worry about _those_ things,” Ardan interrupted gently. “Now, young Mara did a surprisingly good job as far as your Force instruction is concerned, but I’ll be taking that over- as well as the instruction of your friends. As for the Kimorra, I think it goes without saying that it will no longer be necessary for your mother to maintain it-“

       “The point isn’t that it’s _necessary_ -“ Gaya perceived again the essential wrongness of this conversation. She felt as though they were somehow speaking two different languages… or as if Ardan was hearing some responses other than the ones she was giving. With a jolt, her psych profiling class caught up with her- _he’s delusional. That’s the real, clinical term. He’s not hallucinating or anything, but I think he’s having actual delusions._ She took a deep, shaky breath. Ardan- the Ardan she knew- had always been sane as a brick, and now he was living in some kind of alternate, fictional reality while ruining the lives of the people she cared about, as well as her own, plus of course everyone else in the galaxy’s. Wait… “young Mara”…

       “Wait a minute,” she broke in angrily. “How the hell are you my _father_?”

       He appeared momentarily perplexed at the non sequitur. “I…beg your pardon, Gaya?” The swearing had also probably upset him slightly. He’d never liked what he called “coarse language.”

       “Master Bane did a paternity test with the stuff they found at the crime scene where you killed Ms. Starkeller and Krix,” Gaya elaborated. “She tested herself and Triclops, and then me. I think she had a feeling. She was suspecting something like this way before anybody else,” she added with a sneer. “She never fell for any of your crap… _Sidious_. From the start. But I guess Mom and I are just a couple of stupid commoners, aren’t we? What were we, like, your _pets?_ An _ego boost_ , like I was for Chad and Krix?”

       “Of course not,” he retorted. “Now, Gaya, I understand you are tired and under stress and your Krandyn’s Disorder causes you to become overwhelmed-“

       “The _Krandyn’s_? You think _that’s_ why I’m not all like, ‘oh thank you your majesty, I’m so honored to be the royal _pet’_? Because of the _Krandyn’s_?” Gaya jumped to her feet. “Why don’t you just go ahead and blame my _monthly cycle_ too, while you’re at it?”

       “I have no more patience for this,” he declared. “It’s clear to me that you are _overtired_ , and we will speak again when you are calm and ready to discuss this like the mature young woman I know you are capable of being. The guards who brought you here will take you to your bedroom.”

       Gaya struggled not to let her mouth hang open. Even knowing who he really was, to be dismissed by Ardan was almost more than she could take. She wanted to scream, cry, and break all the elegant, expensive-looking furnishings around her with the Force, but even she could tell that that wouldn’t help anything. She settled for trying to bore a hole in his head with her eyes until she was led from the room.

       _Focus on the mission,_ she told herself. _Freeing my friends- and Chad, too, I guess…and finding out how that guy became my biological father._


	35. Learning a Lesson

        Gaya was sulking. She considered this to be progress on her part. It meant she was diverting fear into anger; the quick, petulant kind that would pass through her and leave minimal emotional scarring.

        Sitting curled on the bed in the rooms where the guards had left her, apparently having a meltdown, also gave Gaya the opportunity to surreptitiously check the security in the suite, at least the ‘bedroom’ part of it. She could see at least two undisguised security cameras, which Ardan could and probably would have argued were there for, well, security reasons. Still, they were invasive, and Gaya planned to cover them or short them out very soon.

        And of course there were probably loads of visual and auditory monitoring devices she couldn’t see. It was strange to think of Ardan spying on her, but in his current frame of mind, he’d probably rationalized that he was keeping her from hurting herself or making unwise decisions or something like that.

 _Did he ever spy on me back home, at the apartment?_ She realized with a sudden chill that there was no way to know.

        She needed to get out of this room. She needed to be _able_ to get out. She could try pretending she’d seen the error of her New Republican ways, of course…but she didn’t feel confident of her lying abilities as far as Ardan was concerned. Besides, it was quite possible that he wouldn’t buy it. Just because he was delusional definitely didn’t mean he was stupid, and he’d known her since she was two years old. And he ‘read’ people way more complex than she was, practically for a living.

_I need someone on the inside. Problem is, I’m supposed to be the one on the inside._

        Just as she had begun to silently wrack her brain for ideas, there was a knock on the door of the front room. Gaya opened it to find a stormtrooper, and although it was difficult to be certain, it was possible- her instincts insisted on it, in fact- that he was the one she’d spoken to on the shuttle. “Hi,” she said guardedly.

        He was quiet for a moment, and seemed to shuffle a little. Then, he said, “Yes…greetings, Princess.” _Princess._ That was going to take some getting used to.

        “Our orders are that you should be under guard at all times, for your protection,” he continued. He paused. “My men and I were wondering…it seemed to some of us that, since you are going to be here for some time, you should learn…where things are.”

        “Are you offering to give me a _tour_?” Gaya asked bluntly.

        The trooper winced, slightly but visibly. Gaya wondered for a moment if clones could have Krandyn’s Disorder. This was a level of social awkwardness she would have expected from…well, from herself. “You could call it that. We’ll escort you. It won’t actually be a breach of orders, _per se_.” He sounded as though he was trying to convince himself.

        Gaya nodded. “Thanks. That would be great,” she told him, slipping out the door before he could change his mind.

 

       “Where are we going first?” she asked, voice echoing faintly in the low-ceilinged corridor.

       “Well, you were very disrespectful to his Imperial Majesty today,” he told her matter-of-factly. “In fact, if I may be so bold, Your Grace, you were downright ungrateful.” Gaya felt her anger flare, but she kept quiet, waiting.

       “So,” he continued, as the cloud of anxiety around him grew denser. “I want to show you where that sort of attitude will take you, here. So we’ve brought you to the cells.”

       Gaya felt a grin attempt to spread itself slowly across her face as she realized his game. She did her best not to show it, in case there were security cameras. “Uh, well, thanks, um…sir. I think I’m learning my lesson. Definitely.”

       “Of course, you aren’t finished learning it yet, I expect, Princess,” he told her pointedly. “I think it would be most effective if you were to come down here at regular intervals, to reflect on your good fortune. Maybe even a daily basis.”

       “Sure, that’s a great idea,” she agreed easily. “And you know what might really help? If I got to talk to some actual prisoners about what it’s like in there. Maybe people I trust. Like my friends.”

      He nodded. “I’ll just set up the console here so that you can read who is in each cell, Your Grace.” He did this, and then left, along with his men, although Gaya knew they wouldn’t go far. He wanted to help her, to repay her maybe for her concern for one of his own, but he had no interest in letting her escape.

       She opened the small hatch in the door of the first cell. “Hey,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. She did her best attempt at a dry, contemptuous Imperial accent. “You rebel scum.”

       _“Gaya?”_ Jaina ran to the hatch. “Is it really you?”

       “Of course, who else would it be? I mean, look. I’m clearly me.”

       “Well, you could be one of Palpatine’s mindfreaks. I mean, he hasn’t tried that on us yet, but they say he can do it. What did you borrow from me for Mom’s reception?”

       “Earrings. Crystal ones.”

       “Okay. And where were you and Cody planning to go on your upcoming date?”

       Gaya bit her lip. “That’s…that’s a trick question. I mean, he didn’t…we’re not going on any date.”

       Jaina looked mildly remorseful. “Sorry. I wanted to ask one trick question, just in case. Anyway, you seem like you.”

       “Okay. So…what happened? At the Temple?”

       “He hacked the security alarm and broke in. Mr. Teta, I mean. Well, obviously he’s the reincarnated Palpatine, we know that now, Cody explained his theory about the clones. Jacen said he sent troops to the Jedi Temple, and it worked because the masters were away and nobody was expecting it. But he came to our Temple personally. Anyway, he got through Witicca and everybody without even breaking a sweat, but I don’t think they’re dead.” She paused. “He killed Master Apathian, Gaya.”

       “What?”

       “He just…did it. They weren’t even dueling at that point. He’d disarmed him. He just looked down at Apathian, and he had this really freaky look on his face, just this really scary look…and then he just sank the blade into Apathian’s chest. Really slowly. Almost up to the hilt.”

       “He was getting revenge,” Gaya told her hollowly. “For me…well, really for himself. All the stuff that people did to me…I think he sees it as some kind of thing against me and him both. He killed Ms. Starkeller, and those boys who used to bother me back at PS 180; I’m sure of it.” She shook her head. “I mean, thank the Force he didn’t know about-“ she lowered her voice- “about Cody not wanting to go out. Or else who knows what he might’ve done to him.”

       “I wondered about why he decided to nab Chad along with us, but not Linxo or anyone,” Jaina admitted. “He might have something nasty planned for him. Is Linxo okay?”

       “Yeah, she was helping some of the first-years hide, I heard. So who exactly got taken, aside from you?”

       “From our Temple, it’s me, Cody, and Chad. Then from the Jedi one, Jacen. But Gaya, there’s something else.” She took a deep breath. “He took Annie, too.”

       “Your brother? The little one, I mean?”

      “Yeah. He’s here… _He_ ordered them to put us all in separate cells, but then Annie started crying and some of the stormtroopers came and put him in here with me, so at least that’s good. He’s asleep now.” She looked as if she was about to cry. “Gaya, please make him let Annie go. I mean, it’s different for me and Jacen, because, you know, we’ve had training and stuff. And we’re older. But he’s barely in primary school.”

       Gaya struggled for control over her sudden anxiety. Jaina had always been the one who was confident in her skills and didn’t have meltdowns, and Gaya had always leaned on her. Now, her friend looked ready to crack, and that was the scariest thing yet. She wanted to promise Jaina that she’d get little Anakin Solo home, but she realized with dismay that she couldn’t even guarantee that. “I’ll…I’ll try, Jaina, I promise. Look, Jaina, try to think. If there’s anything you remember, or whatever, that could help me get us out of this…”

       “Yeah. Absolutely. I’ll try.” Jaina seemed to pull herself together somewhat.

      “Okay. I’m going to go talk to Cody now. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

       “All right.” Now Jaina just looked worn out. “May the Force be with you.”

 

       It came to Gaya that she hadn’t spoken to Cody since he’d rejected her offer. It wasn’t that she’d been giving him the silent treatment or anything like that, because even though she’d felt disappointed, angry, and humiliated enough to die on the spot, she understood that it wasn’t his fault he didn’t like her the way she liked him. It was just that after their last talk she had understood that her hopes for the relationship were never going to materialize, and the feelings Cody inspired in her were based on nothing. So she’d avoided him, but without resentment, in the same way that a recovering spice addict might avoid the planet Kessel. It wasn’t him, it was her.

       Now she opened the hatch as slowly and carefully as she could. “Um. Hi.”

      His face appeared nearly immediately in the opening. “Gaya? What the hell are you doing here?”

       “I’m here to try to get you all out of here. Is everyone okay?”

       “Yes, I think so. Gaya, listen to me. Get away from here. Ardan- the man who was your stepfather-“

       “He’s Palpatine reborn. I know. That’s why I’m here. I’m…he’s not just my stepfather, Cody, he’s also…he’s my biological one, too. They don’t know how, but they did some tests-“

      “That won’t save you. Or us,” he cut in. “Gaya, you need to get away. Tell them to blast this place into dust. I came into contact with the Emperor before, and he’ll kill or give up anyone else to further his own plans. Because he’s a father figure to you, you think there’s good in him somewhere, and because you’re related to him you think he won’t hurt you. Gaya, there is nothing he won’t do to protect himself and his power. You have to get off this planet.”

       “I can’t. I surrendered to him and now I don’t think he’d let me leave even if I fed him a story about it. Listen…what are his plans for you guys, exactly?”

       “I think we’re hostages to keep you and Chancellor Organa in line,” he explained. “But after he’s retaken the Empire and won back his old systems- and eliminated the New Republic leadership- I think he wants to make us Dark Side Adepts. You know, those old Force-sensitives they find working as bounty hunters or trapped in lab facilities or whatever. Not quite Sith, but almost.”

       She nodded. “By the way, there’s a squad of st- of clone troopers assigned to protect me, and they led me down here and let me talk to you. How can they disobey orders like that? I thought it was in their genes.”

       “It is. But it’s possible to resist. Most people don’t know that, but it’s true. Bucking the Code. They must like you.”

       “I asked them to contact your old unit and tell them you were okay. What’s the Code?”

       “That’d do it.” He leaned in slightly. “Listen, don’t ever talk about the Code to anyone, not even Jaina. Except maybe Master Bane, because she already knows about it. Some Imperials do. Like, I’m pretty sure Vader knew about it. But most of them don’t. We teach it to each other, older guys teaching younger ones, starting when we learn to talk. The Code is like…it’s rules about how we live and how we fight and everything like that. Like what your responsibilities are to your unit, and to your commanding officer, and to civilians and even prisoners and everything. Most of the rules are just our gene programming put into words, but some of it is…extra. Every clone knows it, at least in part. Every clone with a name knows the Code.” He shook his head. “Breeders…I mean, ‘normal humans,’ sorry…they don’t understand. From their perspective we’re just biological droids. They don’t see why we need to have names and a Code and everything just among ourselves, when we basically don’t have a choice in what we do.”

       Gaya shrugged. “I understand.”

       “You do?”

       “Yeah. Everyone needs things like that. Like…paradigms, or something. To get them through the day, and to make them who they are. I mean, I figure it’s like the Diversity Alliance. People think Krandyn’s is just some disease, a disability like not having both legs or something. They don’t understand why you need to feel proud to have it, why it has to be an identity thing.”

      He nodded. “I’ve begun to understand that. I realized it was like us and the Code that day at the rally. It…made me think a lot about life with my unit.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but didn’t.

      Gaya took a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry I’ve been…not very sociable since then. It’s not because I was mad at you or anything. I just…didn’t know what to say. And I’m not going to tell Ard- _him_ about you and I; you know, I don’t want to…to get back at you or anything like that. So don’t worry.”

       “Gaya-“ he paused, and then tried again. “Look, Gaya, you don’t understand…about that day, the reason I said no…it wasn’t because I didn’t…I mean-“

      “It’s okay. I’d just rather not talk about it right now.” Gaya wondered how much more time she had. She felt better with Cody here; the thought of going back to her quarters alone- or worse, meeting with this new personality wearing Ardan’s face- made her stomach turn. “So,” she said, to prolong the conversation (the first time in her life she’d ever actively sought to increase the amount of immediate socializing in her life). “How do you know Palpatine? You mean, like, personally?”

       He looked down. “He’s your father. I’m not going to-“

       “It won’t bother me, I promise. Please, I’m really curious.”

       He looked into her face and sighed. “All right.”


	36. Cody at the Temple

         The old Jedi Temple loomed large in the shuttle’s viewport. Around them, the thin rain of Coruscant fell. To Cody, it looked as if the Temple was weeping. For a moment, he thought he heard distant sobs and general lamentation emanating from it. He tried to pretend he heard nothing, so he wouldn’t seem crazy.

        Everyone knew what the Empire did to crazy clones.

        Then he remembered who was in the shuttle with him. Well, obviously Burninator, standing protectively over Spaz, who had stopped moaning but wouldn’t unfold himself from his crouch, or stop tapping. The officers clearly wished that the other two passengers in the shuttle would electrocute or choke Spaz, just to make him stop. Turning periodically to stare at him, their glares ran the gamut from annoyed to nervous to openly repulsed.

        Cody was used to the officers’ contempt. It was mirrored in the way all of them- even Spaz, in his way, though almost no one could ever tell what he really thought of anything- felt about most officers.

        Cody gulped. He was far from a coward, luckily, this being an unpardonable sin among his kind, but he was young, smaller than the others from his batch due to his nonfunctional accelerated-growth gene, and besides, he’d heard things about the Sith. Namely, they could read your mind without even looking at you. There was a good chance both of the two additional passengers knew exactly what he was thinking, right now.

        He darted a glance at the tall figure, standing just a meter or so in front of him, black armor and cloak like an obsidian statue, breath like some kind of undead…well…monster. He bent his head slightly, in case the man had heard that. But then, the purpose of Lord Vader’s appearance was, at least in part, to look scary.

       And yet Vader wasn’t the one to fear, from a trooper’s perspective. The wraithlike Sith did deal out terminal punishment on a regular basis, true, but most of it was directed at the officers, a definite plus from the typical infantryman’s point of view. There was also the matter of his onetime apprentice, the Princess Mara-Jade. Vader’s apprentices didn’t last long, but this one had lasted longer than most, and she had escaped instead of being killed (or so the rumors went). Mara-Jade was in relatively thick with the troopers as a whole, since she had befriended the legendary Commander Cody and the men of his unit, and since (again, the rumors went) she had lost her virginity to Dack, another mutant clone like young Cody, who had risen to officer rank through superior intelligence.

       Besides, Vader just seemed to understand that threatening and patronizing clones didn’t work. He almost reminded people of one of the Old Republic Jedi in the way he interacted with his troops, although Cody had to take the others’ word for that, since he was too young to have known the Jedi.

       And even if Vader had been a fountain of clone abuse, he still would have been better than the shadowy, already somewhat hunched figure beside him. Cody gave an involuntary shiver and tried to keep his mind blank.

       He felt Burninator bend down to him and smelled the stench of his hand-rolled cigar on his breath. “Listen, Cody. In there…if anything…if anything, you know, happens or goes wrong, I want you to run. Forget me. Take Spaz with you if you can, but above all, get the hell out.”

       “But what about”-

       “The Code? Kriff the Code. Remember Twitch? And Kos?”

      “Are they going to do that to us?”

       “I don’t know what’s gonna happen to us. But if something does, get out. I’m a damn sociopath, and Spaz is…well, I don’t even know what Spaz is. But you’ve got potential. We got your name right, boy. You’re Cody, come back to us again. You’re going to be something big someday. So when the time comes, you get yourself the hell out.”

 

Their footsteps echoed in the dark, empty, cavernous Great Hall. Cody thought he’d never been in such a grand, mournful, _huge_ old building before. The feelings of sorrow and the memory of suffering and carnage were now a roar in his ears, as if they were actual, physical sound. Not only that: he was seeing things out of what Kos from the unit called the “corner of his eye.” When he blinked or turned his full gaze in their direction, they were gone.

        They looked like…bones. Sometimes, they were corpses, sometimes in various states of decomposition. Cody struggled not to become physically ill. It was like walking on a battlefield, but worse. He felt a pang of shame at being such a coward, that the mere historical fact of violence in a place could induce such physiological and psychological effects. Why did he always have to be so _sensitive?_

        The officers and syncophants, except for Vader, didn’t follow them past the foyer, where the emergency lighting strips ended. Beyond them were only shadows. The emperor himself led them on now. Cody felt something bad coming. He thought he might know- or at least suspect- what. And he suspected why this was happening to him, Spaz, and Burninator. He’d heard the others talking; it had nearly happened to Kos once, after some officer found out about his Zabrak boyfriend (Cody hated that word; it was such a juvenile term for something that, to a clone trooper with no true home or family besides his unit, was almost more important than the Code itself). He’d heard men from other units suspecting it would someday happen to Klepto- in his case, the reason would be summed up in his name.

        It had already happened to Twitch, although Cody didn’t remember him much.

         The Empire- no, that wasn’t right; it was the _emperor_ and not the _Empire_ , because the two were not the same at all. The Code explained that. It was very specific.

        _Emperor Palpatine_ wanted them out of his army.

        _But why?_ He wanted to ask Burninator, but didn’t out of the fear that he’d be heard. _We all fight, even Spaz fights and can follow orders if you explain them right for him. Why should they care if we’re not…prime specimens, as long as we function?_

        _Besides, this is the Emperor we’re talking about. If he wants to weed us out, he could just kill us. Actually, he could just have us killed. He wouldn’t even need to get directly involved. He certainly doesn’t need to drag us in secret to some abandoned place where no one can see_. He wondered what it would be like to die.

        The five of them– the Emperor, Vader, Burninator, Spaz, and Cody- had come to the center of the hall, probably close to the central point of the entire Temple. As Cody’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he felt himself grow cold with horror.

        An enormous pile of gleaming white skulls sat squarely in the center of the floor, at the intersecting point of the four vaulted halls of the Temple’s main level. The pile had to be at least three meters high, with its contents spread out to the corners of the space.

        A figure was lying still on the flattish top of the skull-heap. As they stared, transfixed, it sat up slowly. Cody realized it was a human, or at least a humanoid; a young woman. She was slender and petite, with skin as white as the bones around her. Her hair was a long, thick, matted veil hanging down her back and draped over the skulls; if she stood, it would just about reach her knees. It was a rusty auburn color, like a drop of blood slowly dissipating in a bowl of water. When she did stand up and slowly descend down the pile to them, he saw that her face was angular, with high cheekbones and red lips. Her eyes were dark emerald green, looking almost black from a distance, peering at them from under long eyelashes and arching brows, with an interest devoid of any emotion or concern. She was beautiful, but strangely; it was a ghastly elegance that Cody felt attracted to but did not like.

        He realized Vader was kneeling on the tile, and Burninator had joined him. So, to his surprise, had the Emperor. Cody sank to his knees too, without knowing why, except that if even the Emperor was doing it, it was probably a good idea. But who was this strange woman? The Emperor’s mistress? Was the kneeling some kind of bizarre role-playing game between them? Aside from the fact that the Emperor “doing it” with anyone was too disgusting to think about in any detail, somehow this all seemed a bit too ‘out there,’ even for him.

        Spaz had flattened himself against one of the far walls, and then crumpled into the fetal position in a corner. Cody realized that Spaz already knew what had just occurred to him: this woman was dangerous.

        From where she now sat, on some skulls near the base of the pile, the woman reached out- Cody didn’t see her arm move, but in a way he couldn’t explain, he _felt_ the reaching- and snatched Burninator. Cody realized he had to move, to save him, or even to run as Burninator had ordered, but he couldn’t. He could barely look away as the screams and the sounds echoed down all four different hallways.

        The screaming continued; he realized it was Spaz. He didn’t dare open his eyes, though, because he knew what he’d find if he looked at the woman. Once, he half-opened them for a second, saw all the red everywhere, nearly vomited, and shut his eyes again. Now, carefully, he turned and opened his eyes slowly in Spaz’ direction.

        He heard Spaz’ screams cut off with a croaking sound, and saw Spaz begin to panic silently, hands searching his own neck for the object he could feel wrapped tightly around it. Cody felt rather than saw the invisible fist cutting off his airway, but couldn’t reach it himself.

         The Emperor, watching Spaz struggle, rounded on Vader. “Vader, _stop_ -“

         The heavy respiration sounds of Vader’s suit stopped.

         For a moment, there was what felt like a hungry silence. Then, the suit began a high-pitched, airy whine. Cody saw Vader struggling- in a manner similar to that in which Spaz had just a moment ago- with his suit; the hand not Force-choking Spaz was fumbling with the controls and switches, trying to correct whatever the problem might be. When he apparently discovered nothing wrong, the same hand began to claw at the helmet and hose. His other hand released Spaz and joined it, as his body fell backward off his knees and slumped weakly against a column.

         “ _Master_ ,” the Emperor hissed. Cody turned to look at whoever he was referring to; after seeing the woman (and being sick at the sight of Burninator’s body), he realized Palpatine was addressing her. Always pale, the old man’s face was now white. His pale tongue flicked uneasily over his thin lips, causing him to resemble a reptile of some kind. Cody saw his throat twitch as he swallowed hard, his face containing a mixture of uncertainty, calculation, hatred, and subdued horror. “Master, stop it. _Please_.” As terrified and sick at heart as he felt, Cody had to suppress a smile at the way Palpatine choked bitterly on the words.

         The woman spared him barely a glance, and the whine of Vader’s suit ceased, replaced by its usual rhythmic rasping. Vader sagged further against the column, hands flat on his chest, as if feeling his lungs slowly reinflating.

         Cody felt, rather than heard, her voice in his head. Control your apprentice, Sidious.

         “Yes, Master,” Palpatine muttered, glaring at Vader.

        She indicated Cody and Spaz with a halting gesture. I don’t want them.

        Palpatine looked up at her inquisitively. “Master?”

        _I don’t want them!_ The force of the statement caused them all to recoil.  Get me an officer. Not a clone. Or I’ll have him instead. She indicated Vader.

        “But, Master-“ began Palpatine.

        The woman Force-pulled Vader across the floor and into her arms as if he was weightless. Her hands investigated his helmet, suit, and cape with a curiosity that seemed half academic and half…well, according to what he’d heard, Cody suspected that such curiosity was the definition, in some parts of the galaxy, of the term “sexual harassment.”

        Palpatine hesitated another long moment, and then Cody saw him speaking into a comlink, asking for someone named Assant. He didn’t catch the military rank.

        There was more silence, and then the woman said, You will not bring me any more clones, Sidious. Or prisoners of war. Not until I say you can.

        “But, Master-“ he began again.

        Silence! And the walls seemed to tremble. I am not a means of execution, Sidious. I am not a tool for disposing of beings you want dead…I want a Force-sensitive next time.

        “But Master, those with Force-sensitivity are so rare! Besides, you already have the boy-“

        I don’t care. And Cody thought, _Wait…is he talking about me?_

        I want one of your Dark Side Adepts.

        Palpatine sighed slightly, in the manner of one who has had this discussion before. “My Master, listen to me, please: the Dark Side Adepts are _not_ Sith, and they have nothing to do with any… _rebellious notions_ on my part, they only exist to help me to further our-“

        Our?

Palpatine recoiled visibly as he seemed to realize that, for the first time in years, he had said something wrong. “I misspoke, my Master- you don’t understand-“

        There was a change in the air. Palpatine, resting a hand on a column as if to steady himself, didn’t exactly scream, but he did let out a strangled gasp. Cody realized parts of the old man’s body were jerking and writhing, faintly and spasmodically. It was only a few seconds, but it was horribly clear to Cody what had just happened. She had done something to his body; his nerve endings, or something like that.

I understand everything, Sidious.

        Someone was walking toward them, footsteps echoing on the tile. Cody realized it was one of the junior officers, nondescript in his gray uniform and pasty, somewhat doughy features, which blanched as he took in the scene. “My lord, what-“

         She tossed Vader aside and grabbed the officer, Assant or whatever his name was, easily, and again Cody looked away until the screaming stopped.

        These two will stay here, she told Palpatine as she wiped the blood from her mouth almost genteelly with a handful of Vader’s cape. You would only try to kill them again. It is you, Sidious, who have no understanding. She sat back, satisfied. Remember the Dark Side Adept for next time. Now- you and your apprentice- get out of my sight.

        When they were gone, she turned to Cody. I am Darth Bane. I am your master now. She gestured to him, indicating Spaz. Now go and comfort your brother. He did so, with the knowledge that he hadn’t defended Burninator, or comforted Spaz before now. In the eyes of the Code, he was a coward, the worst thing you could be. He realized he could never face his unit, or any fellow clone, again. Luckily- in that sense, at least- he realized he would probably never again get the opportunity.


	37. A Little Chat

        The clone captain, whose name Cody did not ask, knowing that it would only make things harder for the man, stepped just into the low doorway. “The Emperor will see you.”

        “I have no desire to see him.”

        “He wants to see you.” _After all, what could he say to that?_ Cody mused. The unspoken understanding of obedience felt strange after his time at the Temple, where people either stood with you or shouted you down. He followed his guards out of the cell.

 

        The room he was herded into wasn’t even in the Emperor’s apartments. He didn’t wait for the invitation to sit, not because his legs were tired – he’d been glad to walk up here, in spite of himself, because his legs had gotten restless – but to show Palpatine that, clone though he was, he didn’t give a damn who was in charge here. He might be barely compliant, but that didn’t mean any respect was forthcoming.

        As if Palpatine cared how Cody felt about him. “You spoke with Gaya today.”

        Cody didn’t bother to respond. He focused on the strangeness of Palpatine speaking to him from behind Ardan Teta’s face. He thought back to Life Day at Gaya’s flat. Ardan had been gruff, protective of Gaya (or so Cody had assumed), but he’d seemed to warm to Cody in time, perhaps after witnessing his treatment of Gaya. Cody knew Gaya had never dated; never even come close. _Not until me_. Again, regret shot through him. He did his best to banish the thought.

        Palpatine said, “What does she think of what has happened?” As an afterthought, he ordered, “Answer me this time, boy.”

        Cody decided there was no point in lying. “She feels betrayed. You lied to her and her mother for years. She thinks you kept them around as…pets. Or a kind of personal joke. She wants things to go back to the way they were, and you destroyed that.”

         “She no longer trusts me.”

        “Oh, _really?_ ”

        Even Palpatine looked mildly surprised at the force of Cody’s sarcasm. At last he said, with eerie calmness, “Careful, boy.” He took another breath, perhaps to remain calm, and continued, “You will explain to her that this way is better. She would listen to you.”

        “She’s not an idiot. Even if I did that, she’d know it was your words. And even if she somehow believed I really thought that, it still wouldn’t change her mind.” Cody was getting angry. “You know, you put on a really great show of loving her, but your performance is showing some serious cracks. Deep down, you think she’s just as brainless as everyone else in the galaxy seems to you. Just as brainless, and just as useless.”

        He was almost not conscious of his body flying from the couch – all he registered was the _crack_ and the pain as his head hit the wall. He began sinking down, and a pair of hands jerked him upright by the neck. They were connected to Palpatine, who shoved him against the wall once more for good measure. “You little bastard. Do you imagine I don’t know what’s gone on between the two of you? Do you think that my bringing you here, meeting with you as if you were a real person, a real man – do you actually believe that it means I have anything approaching respect for you? Do you think I wouldn’t be delighted to subject you to a slow and painful death, for the things you’ve only _thought_ of doing to her alone? The only reason you are still alive and intact is that my daughter prefers you that way, and I will not give her another reason for anxiety. I am tolerating you, boy. Do not test my patience.”

        Cody summoned his courage. Telling Palpatine the truth was probably akin to a death wish at this point, but frankly, he’d be damned if he’d let someone like Palpatine cow him. “Gaya and I aren’t involved. She asked me out, and I told her no.”

        Palpatine’s eyes widened momentarily, but then his expression seemed to freeze in a look of homicidal good nature, and his tone went from snarling to silken. “Really?” He gave Cody’s throat a squeeze, not quite constrictive enough to prohibit talking, like a warm-up. “And why did you do that?”

        “Because of you,” Cody snarled. “You really think nobody knew what you and your bootlicking cronies did with the guys who had girlfriends? Or boyfriends, either? It’s Imperial policy – it was, anyway, and for all I know it still is. You think nobody knew what happened to the partners, either? What if I ever went back there? What if I couldn’t handle being apart from my brothers? What would happen to her?” He snorted mirthlessly. “Who wrote that Imperial policy? Who signed off on it? Who _fed_ the rule-breakers to _Bane_ –“

        “Enough.” Palpatine let go, and allowed him to slide to the floor. “Get out. Take him away,” he snapped at Cody’s reappearing clone guards. “Back to his cell. Get him out of my sight.” Cody thought Palpatine might possibly be trembling with rage, but he couldn’t see the man well enough as his brothers hurried him out the door.


	38. A Proposition

        Gaya paused a moment outside the door, as if momentarily unsure of herself. A casual observer – like the clone captain whose men were charged with her safety – might notice how different she looked since she had last left her quarters. Her hair was freshly washed, curling as it air-dried. She had changed into an elegant gown that was black, so dark it was like a hole in reality. It flowed elegantly, yet clung to her form in just the right ways, partly because it was slightly too small for her, the measurements it had been made according to being several months old. (Master Bane had once told Gaya casually that most weight loss was reversed in the course of time, and that people sometimes gained back more than they had lost. Gaya supposed that might be happening to her; she honestly couldn't have cared less at the moment.) The observer would notice small and tasteful pieces of jewelry about Gaya’s person, and he might also notice that her lips were rosier than usual, not fully painted-looking, but lightly tinted. There was a thin shadow around her eyes that suggested kohl or mascara. There was a suggestion of perfume.

        But the greatest change was none of these. Gaya now emitted the aura of someone who had lost her fear, not out of confidence, but out of quiet, burning desperation. She was still far from invincible, but all the same, the observer noted mentally, he’d hate to be between her and her goal.

        Gaya paused, contemplatively. After a minute, she turned to the captain. “I’ve never asked anyone to do this before,” she said carefully, as if trying hard to speak purposefully. “But…captain, could you…announce me?”

        The captain nodded and then, realizing he was still wearing his helmet, replied, “Yes, your Grace.” Gaya stiffened slightly at the title, but seemed to accept it. The captain stepped forward and pressed a small button on the wall beside the door. It emitted a tonally pleasing but audible sound in the room beyond, which could be heard from the corridor.

       A droid ushered them in, and the captain said, “Her Imperial Grace, Princess Gaya Viviani Palpatine, to see his Imperial Lordship, Prime Minister Sate Pestage.”

       Pestage had risen from his seat; now, his gaze was fixed on Gaya with a mixture of curiosity, guardedness, amusement, and attraction. “What can I do for her Grace?”

       Gaya took a small deep breath. “I had a few…questions for you. Issues I wanted to discuss. I thought you would be the best person to help me. Unless you’re too busy.”

       “Not at all.” His old face was crinkling into a smirk. “Please, your Grace, sit.”

        “Thank you.” Gaya turned to her guards. “I’ll be all right. Could you…wait outside, please?” She wanted to tell them they could go on a break, but she wasn’t sure if troopers were allowed to have breaks. “Please,” she repeated, as firmly as she could, and did her best to stare up at them until they reluctantly trooped out.

       They were alone in the sitting room now. It was deep red, and the color scheme, plus its apparent windowlessness, made it seem dark and closed-in, like a lair. It was quiet, too. Gaya couldn’t hear the sounds from the corridor at all.

        Pestage had sat back down, and he was gazing at her. At last, he broke the silence. “I know you. I mean, I’ve seen you before. I remember your face.” As Gaya tried to think how to respond, he snapped his fingers so loudly that she had to conceal a flinch. “You were one of the apprentices. That day at Eidolon Base. With Mara-Jade.”

        “Yes, I was there. I’m sorry for the way she acted, by the way. It must have been…embarrassing.”

        He waved this aside. “You had nothing to do with that, child. No, your old master – your half-sister as well, I suppose – and myself…we go back quite far. I’ve known her since the day she came to your father’s court, and if I may say so, she never had the…temperament for her station. The breeding, I suppose.” The corners of his mouth rose slightly. “She was never a well-mannered young lady like you.”

       Gaya tried to smile. She suspected she looked nervous, but it occurred to her that he might enjoy that. “Well…thank you. For saying so.”

       “Would you like a drink?” The question caught her off guard, even though she had anticipated it as a possibility.

       She started to refuse, and then stopped herself. “Actually…yeah. Yes, please. I would, thanks.”

        “So would I.” He started to stand up.

        “Wait. Why don’t I get them?” She shrugged in response to his inquisitive look (or so she assumed it was; he radiated inquisitiveness in the Force). “My mother runs a cantina. I know my way around a bar.” She could remember how to make two cocktails; she remembered part of a third. She made the first of the two. “Is this all right?”

        He accepted the glass from her. “Very. You are a surprising person, Princess.” Gaya took a sip of the drink for appearances’ sake, and to calm her nerves, and then set it down on a low table near her chair.

        “As I said before, I had something I wanted to discuss with you. It’s kind of a…proposition, really.” She paused. “Is this room…secure? You know – no listening devices? From my father, or anything?”

        “Of course.”

        Gaya took a deep breath, fighting the urge to drink more. “Prime Minister Pestage, I know that you don’t know me and have no reason to trust me. But you seem like a person with ambition, and…and vision, and so I have a proposition. My father wants to resurrect the old Galactic power structure, with him as the supreme ruler. You and I both know that because of his cloning operations, he could rule forever.

        “As his legitimate daughter, I should be his heir. But if he rules forever, obviously that title is meaningless. Now, with the New Republic in possession of his cloning facilities, my father is more vulnerable to death than usual.” She paused. “If anyone was going to depose him, now would be the time.”

       “True; hypothetically, at least.” He shifted. “But tell me, Princess. I understand what such a plan would do for you. But I have been your father’s counselor since long before either you, or your half-sister, or your half-brother – or, I suspect, even your mother – were born. If you were to take the throne, I would simply become your Prime Minister. So what is my motivation?”

       “I don’t know how to rule an empire. I’m sixteen years old. Besides, I don’t need absolute power. Just enough to take care of my family and friends, and to do some good for some causes I care about. So I’d need a co-ruler.” She paused again, and this time she did take another sip of the drink. It made her throat feel warmer, and she did feel calmer. “Maybe even an…Emperor Consort.”

       The silence resumed. At last, Pestage said, “And what is your motivation, Princess?”

       “I thought I already-“

      “You don’t seem the regicidal type.”

       Gaya looked down into her glass, and then up into his face, as close to his eyes as possible. “My motivation? My motivation is this: he broke my Mom’s heart. She’s had a hard life. So have I, come to think of it. He used us as his cover, and he’s still going to use us, so he can pretend to himself that he’s some kind of family man. He uprooted our lives without a second thought. And even before that…there were times when we struggled to stay afloat. He had money stashed away all along that could have saved my Mom some serious stress. And he could’ve gotten me out of public school, where I had some of the worst experiences of my life. And all the while, he claimed he loved us.” Her throat felt closed-up, and it was stinging. She sat for a moment, choking back the crying, until she was calm again. “And…I trusted him. We trusted him, Prime Minister, and he tricked us both, especially me, and he made a fool of me. And I won’t claim that people making a fool of me isn’t an experience I’ve had before in my life, because it is. But…it’s not happening anymore. It ends here. Here and now.”

        He was watching her intently. At last he drained his glass and said quietly, “I understand.”

       “You believe me?”

       “I have seen the lust for vengeance before,” he intoned softly. “Never – or rarely – in a female, especially one as young as you. But I still think I can recognize it, in your face.” The depth of his seriousness hit her like a ton of duracrete, especially the way he was looking at her. A shiver went through her; she hoped he hadn’t seen it. She realized it wasn’t a bad shiver, necessarily. It was just a shiver.

       She tried to relax. She considered taking another sip of her drink. “Then…I can count on your support.”

       “Perhaps.” He leaned toward her slightly. “The rewards of loyalty to your father are immediate. But my reward for conspiring with you is…distant; ill-defined. And, of course, contingent on your ability to kill him.”

      The shiver had completely disappeared; now, the thought that it had ever existed made her feel nauseous – or was it the alcohol? She reminded herself she was dangerous; she knew Teras Kasi and, since she still didn’t have her lightsaber, she had concealed a knife from dinner in her dress. But she didn’t feel dangerous, not right now. She felt small. “Well, I’m confident that I could. He seems to care if I live or die. I can use that.”

       “Your confidence is reassuring.” In unison, they both looked down at his hand, which had placed itself on her knee. “However, I will require a small…gesture of good faith.”

       Gaya had never imagined she could move so fast. One instant, the alcohol in her glass was splashing onto Pestage’s face; in the same movement (when had her coordination gotten so good?) she had grabbed the knife-handle and was brandishing it as she launched herself out of her chair, barely registering the sound of her hem ripping.

       “You little _bitch_ ,” he snarled, sputtering and trying to dry his eyes on his sleeve.

       “Don’t take it personally, my lord,” said Gaya’s mouth, seemingly without interference of any kind from her brain. “I’m not ready to make that level of commitment to the plan yet. I hope you’ll consider what I’ve said anyway, though.”

       It would have been a surprisingly and admirably cool closing remark, she considered later, had she then been able to open the door, either with the panel beside it or by wrenching it open with the Force, and run out into the hall. But it seemed to be locked, and although Gaya had moved and bent plenty of things with the Force in class back at the Temple, it was difficult to focus on the door enough to do more than cause a small indentation in the metal sheet, such as one could make with a hammer and a few determined swings.

       He was on her then, the back of her head hitting the door hard as he slammed her against it. After a few seconds of ineffectual struggling, her brain seemed to wake up and told her leg to kick Pestage in the one place any male couldn’t help but take notice of. He crumpled momentarily, but it was enough time for her to break his grip, strike him again, and and position the knife so that when he renewed his attack, she could more easily slash at him. Again, he reeled back as he clutched his face, covering the two red gashes she had managed to leave.

       She ran, knowing as she did so that she was only buying time and using up valuable energy. If this suite was like hers, and there was no reason to think it wouldn’t be, knowing the level of originality in most Imperial architecture, there would be no other entrances or exits. She had to get through the door somehow…

       She ran into the refresher and locked the door manually as an idea came to her. Pushing a hamper and what looked like a container of bath salts in front of the door, she sat down cross-legged on the tile floor and visualized the sitting room, and the front door. She reached out in the Force until she could feel it, even the indentation she’d left.

       She imagined the Force coming together into a hammer-like form, and hitting the door on the exact spot where she had left the indentation. She thought she could feel the impact, but without sticking her head out the refresher door and looking, which was a bad idea at the moment, she couldn’t be sure. Banishing her doubt as best she could, she sank back into the mental image and tried again.

       Sometime later – it felt like waking up, or like coming back up through deep water – she stopped visualizing and stood up, taking a moment to stretch and bend some feeling back into her legs. While under, she had been totally dead to the world; now, it was hard not to be overwhelmed by the insistent pounding on the door. He was about to break through.

       Cutting off as much of her voluminous skirt and sleeves as she could and tucking the rest of the skirt into the waistband of her underwear, she pushed the hair out of her face and readied her stance, raising the knife.

       He came through the door and barreled into her, a result of momentum as much as lust, and she drove the knife in. She didn’t wait to see exactly where it had gone in, but vaulted past him to the chairs. She leapt onto one, knowing that she could usually launch herself either up or across, but not both, not yet, and threw herself at the door, slamming her full weight on the spot where the indentation had become a hole. Pain flooded her shoulder as it connected with the metal. There was a crash.

        She didn’t realize she had blacked out momentarily until she looked up and saw Pestage standing over her, the knife still stuck in his shoulder. She felt afraid for about a second, until she realized he wasn’t charging at her, or even looking at her. His gaze was focused above her head. She looked directly up and realized there were stormtroopers standing behind her. Stormtroopers surrounded them, standing in a ring around them both. Their blasters were pointed at Pestage.

        Gaya might have gotten worried about Ardan learning what she’d done, but at that moment she was too full of adrenaline and euphoria to care. She was shaking gently. She felt light-headed, and then she felt a strong urge to sleep, and half-realized that she was blacking out again, before she did.

 

* * *

 

        Gaya awoke in bed in her room at the Citadel. It was a testament to the efficiency of the suite’s surveillance devices that she had been awake for about five minutes before the bedroom door slid open soundlessly and Ardan stalked in. _“What the bloody hell did you think you were doing in there?”_ He had gone from fair to white, and he was shaking slightly.

        Gaya rubbed her head – there was a bandage there – and tried to respond through the mental fog. “You…you didn’t give me a choice.”

       “Rubbish,” he snapped. “Gaya, if your goal was to…to punish me in some way by getting yourself…if that was some damn passive-aggressive attempt at punishing me or getting me to give you whatever you want, you’re a hell of a lot less intelligent than I thought you were.”

       “You’re the one who plays mind games, not me.”

       “This is not about anything I have done! This is about…about what happened in there! You were with your sister when they arrested Pestage, you knew what he was capable of, why the hell would you – would you even suggest something like that as an option for someone like him –“

        “I wasn’t going to do anything with him. I just thought he’d be more likely to help me -“

       “I suspect the distinction escaped him!”

       “This is bull.” Gaya pushed herself up against the pillows. “You were going to make Master Bane marry him. What the hell’s different about this situation? You weren’t consulted beforehand?” She paused. “The rooms – Pestage’s rooms – they’re soundproof, right? I couldn’t hear the hall when I was in there. So how did all the stormtroopers gather so fast, and know who to point their guns at and everything? You do have bugs in Pestage’s rooms, don’t you?”

       He snorted. “Of course I do. I’m not an idiot.”

       “So you knew what was going on and you left me in there!”

       “I only found out halfway through. And I wanted to see what you would do.” He smirked grimly. “You can hardly expect to run an empire if you can’t even defend yourself from an old man who isn’t even Force-sensitive.”

       “I won’t ever run the Empire. You know that.”

      “Oh no? You prefer the glorious New Republic that cheated you out of a proper education, that accused you of murder, that restrained you forcefully –“

       “Oh please. You never did anything for…people like me when you were in charge. You didn’t even do anything for women. You never purposefully helped anyone unless you benefited as a direct result. Besides, that’s not what I meant. I know you plan to rule forever. Aside from the actress playing the part of ‘royal daughter’ in the comedy skit that is ‘Palpatine Pretends He Feels Love and Other Normal Emotions,’ I’ll never be anything in your world.”

       He stopped and seemed to be thinking about what she had said, for the first time. At last, he asked, “Is that what all this has been about?”

       “What?” Gaya was taken aback. “What do you mean, ‘all this’?”

       “What we’ve been doing since you arrived. The arguing, the insults, the stubbornness…” He paused. “Gaya, was what you said to Pestage true? Do you fear being in Mara-Jade’s position?”

       “What? No! Of course that’s not what this is all about!” But even as Gaya said it, a part of her felt as if she was lying. “No, this is about you kidnapping people and committing treason! This is about you lying to everyone, especially me!”

       He regarded her as he’d been doing; calmly, but also carefully. It bothered her because it made her less angry. “So what’d you do with Pestage?” she asked to distract them both.

       Ardan’s expression darkened. “He has been dealt with.”

       “The conspiracy bit was my fault, you know.”

       “I don’t believe he would ever have actually helped you bring me down. He intended to use you.”

       “You know, you really did try to force Master Bane to marry him. And now you’ve punished him. It really is hypocritical.”

       “I thought she might enjoy some power,” he snapped. “Pestage had almost as much as me. And she would have controlled him, if she knew what to do, which she did.”

       “She didn’t want some guy’s power. She wanted her own. In your Empire, that wasn’t possible.” Gaya shook her head. “Did you really think she’d be happy as some kind of…glorified twilighter?”

       He sank into a chair, closed his eyes, and rubbed his temples for a while. At last, he said, “What do you want, Gaya?”

       Gaya took a deep breath. “Release Jacen and Jaina’s little brother. Anakin. He’s just a little kid. He doesn’t understand what’s been going on. Jaina and Jacen can take care of themselves, but he can’t.”

       She watched him take a long deep breath, and let it out slowly.


	39. The Cure

         Deep in meditation, Commander and Jedi Master Luke Skywalker anticipated the comlink call easily, and had it already in his hand when it sounded. “What’s up, Bane? Is everyone all right?”

         He could almost hear the shrug. “No change by us. How are things there?”

        “No change, really. Nerves are up, but that’s not surprising.”

       “Has Leia called you at all?” she didn’t bother to hide the concern in her voice. “How is she?”

       “No, and I don’t know, but I knew about Ben. She and Han are probably just relieved. Taking it in.”

        “Yeah,” she agreed, not sounding convinced. Then, “Master Bane says she wants to speak with you.”

         “With _me?_ _Why?”_

         “She wouldn’t say. It seemed important.”

           “Well, okay, I’ll be right” – Luke stopped as the chill in the Force hit him. His perception still widened from the meditation, he could feel the soundless footsteps in the Force, the invisible fibers of everything around them bending and caving slightly to their pressure.

            “Uh, never mind,” he said as casually as he could. “She’s already here.”

 

* * *

 

 

         Gaya had readied herself earlier that morning, and when Sidious gave the guards their orders to fetch her, he received word that they had found her in the library that connected her rooms with his, buried in some tome. The mental image of her reading his books – at first he’d dared to hope it was one of those _he_ had written, but alas not – was utterly charming, and it lightened his spirits considerably.

         Gaya and her mother had always had such an effect on him; it was almost unnerving. He was capable of controlling such emotions – usually – but their strength still surprised him at times. He had never been emotional before, especially for a Sith. Even rage, his strongest-felt passion, was easy to reign in when necessary. Ambition, if that could even be properly called an emotion, ran strong as well, but as a passion, it felt mainly cerebral, not instinctual or visceral. Lust, at least in its conventional sense, was either absent or peripheral, except in certain cases, Niama Viviani being one such.

         Affection, again until the Vivianis had entered his life, was mostly opaque to him. He understood the mechanics of it, naturally, and he knew he had received it at some points in his life: from his family, while they lived; from friends; occasionally even faintly from his Master, the first indication to Sidious that the old man was at last growing vulnerable after so many years. For all his life, he had seamlessly pantomimed reciprocating it – as a young child, still desperate to please and just beginning to realize the essential difference within himself from those around him, terrified that everyone else could see him as the monster he had then believed he truly was. And then later as a man, to woo allies and lull potential adversaries. But with Niama – and then, even more strikingly, with Gaya – he had found that he had no need to pretend, at least most of the time; sometimes it was difficult, but many times it simply seemed to _flow_ , as naturally as blood from an open wound and at first, in its own way, equally painful and terrifying. It was a storm he could ride, but it never let him forget for long how precarious his control over Affection truly was.

         It was even stronger now since his return. All his emotional responses seemed to have intensified; it was as he had always imagined stimulant or psychotropic drugs might be. He could only assume it was a combination of the raw power of the Dark Side he had channeled in order to find his way back to this plane; and his newer, more youthful and therefore more hormonally active body. He had managed to control it for years as he planned, but now it finally seemed to be rather getting away from him.

          _Why did I send Organa that message? And why broadcast it publicly instead of sending a private transmission to her office?_ And the answer was, _because it felt so bloody good_.

         And here was Gaya now, no longer being escorted by so much as leading her guards. This, too, pleased him. She even smiled at him as she approached, though it was plaintive. He returned the gesture, motioning for the guards to leave them. “Good morning, my dear one. Did you rest well?”

         She nodded. “Not too bad.” She still appeared nervous, which he found agitating. He controlled himself and masked the feeling, however. “How about you?”

         “Very well, thank you.” He began to lead her slowly across the vast black-tiled floor of the hall, to the large viewport. “I hear you finally found the library.”

         “Yes, I did. It’s…great.” He waited for her to elaborate. “I was meditating in there for a while. I like being around the books. The authors, they leave almost…shadows; ghosts of themselves behind in their words. Their presences are really soothing.”

       “Indeed they are, child. Indeed they are.”

       “And then I found…well, I mean, I think…it _said_ it was one of the official diaries of Darth Bane the First.”

         “That’s exactly what it is,” Sidious confirmed. “It is a digital transcription of the text from one of the codices in my personal collection. Obviously, the actual manuscript is far too fragile to be handled so casually. But I do hope to show it to you at some point. It’s one of the few surviving manuscripts that have been illuminated in the traditional style of the region of Dathomir where Bane was believed to be born. It’s quite beautiful.”

          “I’d like to see that.” Her hands flapped at the thought, just momentarily, but he was still happy to see she was slowly relaxing. He knew he could simply look into her mind via the Force to see what she was thinking and feeling, but that felt unnecessarily invasive at this moment, especially given the more comfortable tone that today’s encounter was taking. “The diary I was reading…it struck me how it’s really similar…this probably sounds silly, but it’s really similar to _Ten Thousand Years of Darkness_. Plot-wise, I mean.”

         He had to smile. “Yes, I know.”

        “ _Ten Thousand Years of Darkness_ is based on her life, isn’t it? Loosely.”

        “Yes. The being who wrote it – Kamus – was an early devotee of Bane’s. I studied him for a little while in connection with a quasi-Sith cult I was hunting at the time. He had no Force-sensitivity himself – unfortunately, because he was extremely gifted. He managed to attach himself to her as a sort of personal scribe and chronicler of her regime. He wrote a series of epic poems about her various conquests, and odes to her in his admiration; it’s a pity more of them don’t survive, but between Jedi iconoclasts and later generations deciding the work of a non-Force-user was blasphemous, he’s largely fallen into obscurity.” Sidious allowed himself a sneer. “The fact that his work is associated with the Sith Empire, even though he took care to make it clear that _Ten Thousand Years of Darkness_ was ostensibly about the ancient empress Teta, didn’t help him.”

         “I remember when I was six and you convinced me you were actually descended from her, and that’s why you had the same name. You told me that made me a princess.” She shook her head ruefully. “Did you know how ironic that was going to be when you said it?”

         Sidious couldn’t help but chuckle. “I’m afraid I did. But you were so _excited_.”

        “So if you were reading _Ten Thousand Years of Darkness_ to me even back then…you were really reading to me about Darth Bane.”

         “It was one of the few Sith stories I believed I could safely pass on to you, especially in the early years after the Endor incident. In fact, it’s what truly led me to your mother.” He had often wanted to tell her the story; even though he wondered whether she was ready to hear it, something in him couldn’t stop. “The first time we met, she had a copy in her possession. It was one of the few books she owned. I don’t consider myself especially superstitious, but looking back, I think a part of me did believe it was a kind of sign. Of course, I was injured and weakened at the time.”

         “So…I was conceived partly because of that book.”

         “Well…yes. I suppose so.”

         “ _Gross_.” He chuckled again, and for a moment, she joined in. Then she asked, “So…how did you and Mom…get together? I mean, the Empire was still in power back then. How could you two even… _meet?”_

         “I was traveling in the downlevels – secretly, and securely, or so I believed. Perhaps I overlooked something, or perhaps there was an information leak. In any case, we were seized upon by some sort of mob – I suspect Rebel agitators were among them – and I found myself injured, but I managed to escape. Your mother found me and didn’t recognize me, which was not surprising as I had not made any public appearances in years, likely since before her birth. She helped me. I always intended to return the favor after I made it back to the Capitol, and I did manage to send her some money, but…”

         “I know about the money.” Gaya paused. “So…she felt…so you two got close?”

         “My vocal cords were damaged thanks to a knife across my throat. I could have told her through the Force who I was, but…I suppose I preferred that she not know. I found her…refreshing, after the transparent flattery of the court. I thought of hiring her, or taking her in at the Palace, but I decided her freedom was a better reward. Freedom…and sobriety, of course.” He paused momentarily, aware of how it would likely sound. “That’s why I gave her you.”

         Gaya’s expression didn’t change much, but she did stop in her tracks for a moment. “What? …What do you _mean?”_

         Sidious felt his ears grow unexpectedly hot. “You’re a knowledgeable girl, Gaya. I know you understand how these things work.”

         “But…she always says she doesn’t know where I came from. She thought maybe one of her clients when she just wasn’t being careful enough…” For a moment, the mask cracked, and he could see Gaya’s eyes growing wet. “Why would she _lie_ about that? Even if…even if it was _short_ , or a _one-night thing_ , why would she tell me it was…it was some random _pervert_ instead of someone she actually _liked_ ”-

         He had wondered briefly if he could avoid telling her this part of the story, but it seemed he couldn’t; still, something in him had always squirmed at seeing her upset. “She…does not know.”

         Now Gaya was completely quiet.

         For a long while, they both stared out the window in silence. Sidious pretended not to notice Gaya dabbing her eyes lightly with her sleeves.

         At last, she said, “Okay.”

         “’Okay?’”

        “Yeah. Okay. It happened.” She inhaled sharply. “She doesn’t have any… _memory_ of it or anything?”

         “Of course not.”

        “Then it’s done.”

        “Do you intend to tell her?”

          “No. No, I don’t really want my Mom knowing she’s a rape victim, or that her rapist is the only guy she ever really trusted. Because that’s at least technically what this is, you know.”

         “Yes. I know.”

          “Don’t tell her about this.”

          “I was not about to.”

         She took another deep breath. “We’re going to talk about this,” she told him. “After all this… _other stuff_ is over.”

         “Understood,” he agreed. “In fact, it’s about that ‘other stuff’ that I wish to speak now.”

         “Okay.” He led her to the table and drew out a chair for her. She sat. “By the way…thanks for letting Anakin Solo go.”

         “You are welcome. And you were right; the older two will be leverage enough.” He sat down across from her at the table. “Gaya, after all this business is finished…what do you _want?”_

        She looked up at him cautiously. “What do you mean?”

        “I thought about what you said.” Sidious tried to keep the proud smile off his face. “And I realized that you were right.”

        “About what?”

        “You claimed you could never achieve power in your own right without the eventual goal of ascending the throne. And you were correct.” He took a deep breath; even for a worthy cause, this was a moment more difficult than he had foreseen. _Well, I suppose I am giving up a near-lifelong ambition. It’s only natural to be a little put out_. “And so you will.”

        “I…will?”

        “You will become my heir,” he clarified. “When you are ready, you will take my place.”

        For a few moments, she simply stared at him in disbelief. Slowly, he could see her beginning to process it, and despite herself, she asked, “But…you pretty much can’t die. At least not with all your cloning facilities and everything. Why wouldn’t you want to…I mean, what are you going to _do?”_

         “I will retire with your mother, perhaps to my homeworld. I can continue my studies of the Force and the Dark Side in particular; it’s not greatly different from what I did with my days during much of my reign. And of course, I can advise you.” He supposed he was understating his anticipated involvement in her reign, but that could all be clarified at a later date. _After all, she has quite a long way to go before I can expect her to govern even a single sector, realistically_. “I’m confident I will still find plenty of time to enjoy my position. Remember, Gaya, we are discussing a long-term goal. I do not expect to set this plan in motion tomorrow.”

          Gaya looked relieved. “Good. I’m not anywhere near ready for…well, for anything _like_ that.” He could see her spirits starting to rise, however, at the thought of it. Even her hands had begun to flap themselves again. This too was a pleasing sight.

         “But you _know_ you’re not yet ready, and that is a positive sign,” he reassured her. “In connection with that, there is a development I wish to bring to your attention. I can provide you with all the information you need later, but there is…a treatment.”

        He could sense she was about to ask…but she didn’t. She knew. He could see it in her face.

        “For the Krandyn’s,” she clarified. Her voice had become too quiet. Something had shifted in the air.

        Sidious nodded. “It’s experimental, but according to my sources, it has a great deal of potential. It is said to completely correct the abnormalities of the neurological structures affected. I knew you would take an interest in it – perhaps a worthy first project for you, as an Imperial Princess, would be the distribution of access to it for those in need. It makes an excellent public works campaign, I think – charitable, politically unobjectionable, and personal enough not to seem contrived…”

         He glanced over at Gaya and trailed off. She had gone extremely still and somewhat rigid in her seat. She was gazing at an empty spot on the table, and he thought a slight pallor might be creeping over her dusky complexion (she had so much of her mother in her looks, thank goodness). Her breathing had quickened.

         She radiated unease.

        When she noticed him looking, she seemed to shake herself awake again. “It sounds interesting,” she said neutrally. “It’s a good idea.”

         Gaya had never been a frequent liar, because unlike her father, she was no good at it.

          “I’m sorry,” he told her, not bothering to hide his confusion. “I did not mean to upset you. I had thought…you might be relieved. Happy, even.”

         “I _am_ relieved,” she lied again, and he did not understand why. “So…would I be doing this treatment, too? Taking it, I mean?”

          “Well…yes, of course. As part of your eventual preparation. Don’t you think that’s best?”

          Even without the Force, and his years of learning to read people like the flashing neon advertisement signs that most of them were, he would have detected her hesitation. “Yeah, of course it is. You’re right, sorry. Thanks for telling me about it. I’ll look it over, okay?” _Lying again_.

          _We must work on her control of her emotional responses. For all the intelligence I know she takes from me, even those old fools on the Jedi Council would see right through her_. “You’re welcome. Perhaps we had better change the subject.” He took a datapad from the table and keyed in a coded order. He supposed he could have simply given it in plain Basic, but he had no desire to speak to subordinates at the moment. Despite himself, he still felt deeply shaken by Gaya’s response to the news of the potential cure. “I have something more entertaining planned for us, in any case.”

         The silence between them had regressed almost to its initial awkwardness, and a treacherous part of Sidious wondered when the easy way they had always gotten along before would return. He knew intellectually that it couldn’t happen overnight, but it stung that Gaya now treated him with the social mannerisms she reserved for acquaintances and even strangers. He found himself drumming his fingers at the slackness of the troopers. Finally, the hall’s doors opened, and two troopers dragged a petrified Chad Divinian into the room.

 

* * *

 

 

         Cody was trying to meditate when he heard on the edge of his perception the cell door to his right opening. He shut his eyes tighter and tried to remember whether that was Chad or Jaina. Chad, he was pretty sure.

         Yes, it was Chad; he could hear the guy yelling as they dragged him out. Calling for help, even though it was useless. Pleading with the guards not to take him back up there. Cody didn’t blame him; he’d heard the noises when Palpatine went down to ‘visit’ Chad the first time, and then later on when they’d dragged Chad up (presumably so Palpatine could play with him more extensively), the noises the boy had made in his cell when they brought him back. Chad was a douche, and as his roommate Cody knew it better than anyone, but the guy did have his moments. And even if he didn’t, being a douche didn’t warrant torture.

         After Chad, as the guy who had rejected the Imperial Princess, it would probably be his turn. Unless he changed his mind, which, ordinarily, Cody would probably have done, given how unlikely it was that he’d get in trouble, even as a trooper, if the girl he was seeing was Palpatine’s daughter. But he didn’t want Gaya to feel like he was using her to shield himself from Palpatine. He didn’t want Palpatine to think so, either. He didn’t want to _feel_ like he was doing that, himself, come to think of it.

         He was nearly able to see the glow of the Zone when he dimly heard his own cell door slide open. Bracing himself for his brothers’ grip, he eased himself back into his body, and opened his eyes carefully.

         His breathing seized as he stared up into the pale, angular face of Bane the First.

         < _Don’t worry_ ,> her deceptively tranquil voice sounded in his mind, even as she searched it. < _I have released the others, except for Divinian, who is already above. Now, you wish to see Sidious defeated, and to bring Gaya back to her home safely. >_

         Cody swallowed. What was that one line from _Ten Thousand Years of Darkness_ , back when they’d had to read it for lit class at the temple?

            _Again I descend into the very mouth of the beast_.

           “Yes, my Master. I do.”

          < _Good_. _Here is what you must do. >_

 

* * *

 

 

          Gaya was still staring at Chad as Sidious Force-lifted him up onto the conference room table; metal for easier cleanup, and thank goodness for that, considering the mess he intended them both to make with the little bastard. She looked a little pale, but Sidious had anticipated some repression on her part. As anxious as he was to dispose of the brat, this would form an important first step in Gaya’s instruction as well. It wasn’t enough for Sidious to take revenge on Divinian for laying a metaphorical hand on what was his. The girl would have to learn to recognize and respect her own thirst for vengeance. He’d seen a flash of it that day back at PS 180, but she had a long way to go yet.

           He cleared his throat to catch Gaya’s attention. “Here, girl.” He took her gifts out of the pockets in the folds of his robes, and held them out to her. “I’m glad you’ve been feeling more comfortable here; I had been waiting to give these to you.”

          Gaya looked down at her lightsaber hilt in his left hand, and the wickedly curved, jagged-edged knife in his right. Slowly, he saw comprehension break over her face, and she took both in silence.

          “Use whichever one you like, my love,” he told her, the affection entering his voice without him meaning it to. “The knife will cause more pain, of course, but I know you’re more used to your lightsaber.”

           Sidious started slightly as Gaya turned back toward the boy. At the edge of his awareness, he could feel some impact; _an explosion?_ But he couldn’t see any impact or debris out the window. No alarms had sounded. He put it out of his mind, for now. “Go ahead, Gaya.”

           Gaya activated her lightsaber, but didn’t move toward Divinian. The boy looked from Sidious to her, eyes wide with panic. “Oh gods, Gaya, please – please don’t – I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but come on – _please_ ” –

           “Silence,” Sidious snapped, and his grip in the Force closed around the boy’s throat. He saw Gaya’s eyes grow wide, and cursed silently as he released the boy’s neck. “Gaya, if you wouldn’t mind…” He knew he ought not to rush her, but he was so very _impatient_ …

           He felt rather than heard it, but he did hear it. _BOOM._

           A much closer impact; this time, it rocked the tower.

           Sidious turned to the enormous panorama of the sky behind them, in time to see the explosion at the edge of the visible skyline just beginning to dissipate in smoke and flame. For a few moments, he could only watch, unable to comprehend what he was seeing.

           He was grabbing for his comlink when the awareness hit him, like clouds parting to release the light of a sun. The thing was to send Gaya to safety in one of the bunkers, and then… _but what was happening?_

           As he looked down at the comm, it appeared that none of his subordinates had any answers. There had been no hacking, and no codes stolen; explosions were not the Rebels’ style anyway. The rest of his navy was just as confused as he was. The explosions of the planet’s defenses were entirely spontaneous. No trace of a cause, not even any remains of bombs or missiles.

          And why had he not sensed it?

           A physical shiver went through Sidious as he realized the answer.

          _Because someone has been clouding my mind_.

           “ _No,”_ Sidious whispered.

          The door burst open, to reveal the clone Cody, and the Solo twins. The alarms had, once again, not gone off. Of course they hadn’t.

          “Guards!” he called, and reached for the comm…

           He heard the electrical hum before he saw it, let alone felt it.

           Then Sidious looked down at the lightsaber blade plunged into his chest.

           He realized the pain was coming. It had not reached him yet, but in just half a second, it would.

          He sank down against the marble tiles, still not fully understanding, even as Cody pulled the blade out of him and tried to hand it back to Gaya, who did not take it. She did not move. The Solo brats were unbinding Divinian as Cody whispered into the near-catatonic Gaya’s ear and tried to coax her from the room. Eventually, he took her hand and pulled her, and she followed without resistance. Sidious watched her leave, feeling as if he was doing so from very far away. The pain in his chest was not as bad as he had anticipated. It felt remote. Everything felt remote.

           He was already growing cold. Or perhaps it was the air in the room. The lights were beginning to flicker and blow out, so perhaps the temperature control was also dying.

           He wondered how far Gaya had made it; if she was already safely offworld by now.

            On the windowpane in front of him, frost began to form.

 

           He felt her approaching before he saw her; it didn’t matter, as he hadn’t the strength to move or speak. He watched in near-silence – he was gasping a bit – as one by one the lights went out around him, and he could see his breath in the now-frigid air.


	40. The Temple

         It was the first Senate debriefing that Bane could remember in which she’d experienced anything other than veiled hostility at best from the assembled Senators. No doubt that was due to Leia’s influence. Any group that aided in the successful rescue of the Supreme Chancellor’s children, and took on Coruscant’s attacker, was probably close enough to golden for a good few months.

          _Screw the “probably,” in fact_. The notification had come through on her comm as soon as she checked it for messages on her way out of the conference chamber; the permits for construction of the new Sith Temple had just gone through after more than a year in the pipes.

         But both Bane and Luke were too exhausted to enjoy the triumph as they rode home in silence on the just-set-back-on-its-route hoverbus. Or at least Bane assumed Luke was; she had enough to cope with as far as her own feelings went; she didn’t need to reach out for his. She felt tired, of course, but she was used to functioning on little sleep and general rest. The greater feeling was a bone-deep sense of fatigue.

         A great part of her felt as if it had regressed. As if she was seventeen again, newly escaped after five years in the Imperial court, and terrified despite her bravado that her father would find her and pull her back into his world. At that time, even after finally meeting him in person and witnessing his physical frailty firsthand, he had still seemed to be a kind of shadow, which lengthened in the light of Tatooine’s suns as they set, and stretched itself until it covered everything as far as the eye could see.

           But over time and distance from him, she had gained age and perspective. He was only a man – a completely self-serving, parasitic man, to whom other people were a sort of hologram, or else were like droids; gifted with the manners and trappings of sentience, yet lacking (at least officially) its true essence. But still a man. He was capable of vulnerability; capable of being defeated. He was capable of being escaped.

          Until he wasn’t. Until he had returned from beyond death, and suddenly he was quite literally tearing down the new world that Bane herself had attempted to help build. He had attacked the Capitol; he had kidnapped her apprentices. The knowledge rankled, even as Bane knew realistically that he was dead. Gaya had stabbed him, and Cody reported that as they had left, Bane the First had been approaching him. Sidious might escape death, but Bane doubted he would escape the First One very much. Still, she would have liked to end him herself, or at least to see the light go out of his eyes personally.

          That was one part of her thoughts. The other part was Gaya. The girl had been shell-shocked when they had recovered her, Cody, Chad, and the Solo twins. For a long time, she had not spoken. Eventually, though, once Bane had pieced together bits of the story from the others, she had realized that the girl would need to say something. The senators at the debriefing would want details on how Sidious had been dispatched, and even though someone like Chad, who had witnessed it, could most likely fill them in well enough, they would want Gaya’s statement. After encouragement from Jaina and Cody, the girl had finally been able to type out a paragraph on Luke’s pocket datapad, which Bane herself read for the council, as well as submitting digital copies to the case’s file.

          They had tried to take Gaya home, but she wouldn’t go. Eventually, the girl’s wordless meltdown had become so desperate that Bane simply put her to bed in her dorm room at the Temple, where she also considered getting together a bedroll for herself on the floor, or else borrowing Jaina’s bed, so that Gaya wasn’t left alone. In the end, Linxo and Cody elected to stay with her; to their surprise and Bane’s, Chad also requested one of the spare camp beds in the room. The four of them slept together the first night, the lights on and their lightsabers within arm’s reach, while Bane set herself up on a sofa not far from their door. Luke had his own apprentices to see to.

         Niama had been briefed on the full situation; it had taken the woman awhile to accept it, but surprisingly, less time than Bane had expected. Perhaps Niama was simply accustomed to men’s betrayals. She reminded Bane very much of her own mother, who still rode across the dunes back home, and who Bane thought, every day, was a thousand times freer than her daughter could ever be, now. “Civilization” was a toxin, which polluted and mutated everything in its wake.

         Now Niama was ready to see her daughter, but Gaya could not bring herself, Cody explained, to see _her_. Taking everything on her shoulders as the girl usually did, Gaya believed she had denied her mother her one chance at happiness, albeit for the good of the New Republic. Of course, it might well be projection on the girl’s part: she knew that her life would have been infinitely easier under Sidious’ new regime, and perhaps giving it all up, especially in the way she had, had been too difficult. Bane had been stalling the woman with excuses about Gaya’s supposed injuries, but that wouldn’t work much longer.

         “Bane?” Bane jumped slightly; startled. She hadn’t expected either of them to talk on their way home – Luke seeing her back to the Temple in his typically gentlemanly way, and then catching another hoverbus over to the Jedi Temple – and they’d already both been silent for a while.

         “Yes?” she managed.

         “Want to have dinner with me tonight? That place where we first went to eat after you got back from Anzat?”

          _You want to go out **tonight?**_ Bane wanted to object, but she didn’t think she could handle an argument right now, even if she enjoyed denying Luke what he wanted, which she didn’t (at least, not with the important things). “Okay. I’ll need a few hours to get washed and dressed…and _sleep_ ,” she admitted.

          “Me too, don’t worry.” His blue eyes clouded. “Sorry, I know you’re tired – we both are – it’s just that…well, I guess I want to do this before anything else can happen.” He coughed. “Go out for a nice dinner with you, I mean.”

         It was an odd thing to want to get done before you potentially died, but Bane was too tired to think more about it. She leaned back against him, nodding into his shoulder. “That can be arranged.”

 

          She reflected now, as she and Luke entered the rather pretentious bistro near the government district where they’d first eaten dinner together, that she wished they were eating someplace less formal. At a tavern she could hunch over her food and drink and show her complete emotional exhaustion since her father’s return, but here, she felt she had to put on an air of being composed.

         The waitstaff treated them both more kindly now, especially Bane. _Then again, I’ve stopped treating them like a bunch of stuck-up tight-asses_. Bane had the decency to feel embarrassed at the memory. She liked to think she didn’t encourage her apprentices to be assholes to the working class.

           Across from her in the booth, Luke shivered visibly. “They always turn up the air too high in here,” he remarked. “Everywhere on this planet, really.”

          “What’re you complaining about? You’re the one who’s got a suit jacket,” Bane told him, but with a weary smile over her whiskey glass.

           His eyes turned worried – he’d been run ragged, too, she could see; his nerves were on edge. “Do you want to wear it?”

           “I was _joking_ , Luke,” she reassured him with a more noticeable smile. “I’ve got a wrap, and the drink’ll warm me up. You’re right about the air, though. Although,” she added thoughtfully, “Ever since I first left Tatooine, everywhere else seems too cold.”

            Since she knew it would make him happier, or at least distract him, she added, “I talked to Lord Vader about that, once. He agreed with me. So perhaps it is a Tatooine thing.”

           Even the possibility of hearing more memories of his father didn’t seem to lift Luke out of it completely, but he did brighten up slightly as he commented, “The only place I’ve ever been warm enough since Tatooine is Yavin 4. It’s a humid heat there, you know. It feels too hot, almost.”

          “I’d like to feel that, for sure,” Bane said, hoping it might encourage him on the topic. It excited him. He wanted to move the New Jedi Temple to the moon, she knew, and all that the new location implied – a new separation from the political side of the New Republic. She commended that. Still, she hated to think of the distance.

          “You should come out with me,” Luke agreed. “The next time I go out to inspect the construction. We’re renovating one of the Massassi temples.” He caught her expression and added, “With permission from the tribe. We’ve even got a cultural consultant.”

           The invitation stretched between them, and then Luke spoke again. “Speaking of that – you coming to Yavin with me, I mean – I had sort of a thought. Actually, I guess it’s more of a question.”

          She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?”

          He fumbled in his jacket pocket for what was revealed to be a small velvet pouch, which he set wordlessly on the table, in front of her place.

            Bane waited for him to speak, but he seemed to be frozen. Slowly, she reached across her plate for the pouch, and undid the drawstring carefully to tip out its contents into her palm.

          It was the same opal ring of her grandmother’s that he’d brought out the night of the attack, and Bane’s brow furrowed. Why would Kylja give a dowry ring like this to a _settler_ , and why was Luke now giving it to _her?_ When a person gave their lover a ring, of course, that _usually_ meant…

        Oh.

_Oh._

_Oh gods_.

          And suddenly the world felt _different_ , as it had when Palpatine was back, only…not at all like that, in fact. Better, for certain, but also infinitely stranger. She had known her next objective then. She had no mental script for _this_.

          Finally, Bane’s mouth spoke, apparently with no input from her brain. “Are you asking me…what I think you’re asking me?”

            Luke nodded slowly, and she waited. “Yes, Bane,” he managed finally, taking a big gulp of his own drink.

            And suddenly she was the fat, sunburned, freckled girl in prep school again, too connected to be easy and too ugly to be genuinely desirable. “If this is a trick, you’d better start sleeping with your eyes open.”

           His brow knit. “Why would it be a _trick?”_

          “Never mind,” Bane said quickly. She took a deep breath. “I’m not getting rid of the tattoos, you know. Not even if we have a kid.”

           He burst out in surprised laughter. “Yes, Bane, _I know_.”

           It really was a beautiful ring. Studying it meant she didn’t have to look up at him, since if she did that she knew her face would catch on fire.

           Finally, she heard herself ask, “ _Why?”_

           She did manage to look up now, in time to watch him go red too, as he shrugged desperately. “I…you know. I like you, a lot. Being with you. It makes me happy.”

           Bane shook her head incredulously. “Jedi _nerd_.”

           He rolled his eyes, looking both impatient and mildly terrified. “Look, Bane, what do you _say?”_

           She put the ring on cautiously; it would be just her luck for her finger to be too fat for it. She breathed a silent sigh of relief when it fit. “You realize, of course, that this plays right into my Sith agenda.”

          He was starting to grin at her now as his fear slowly dissipated. It was maddening. “ _Sure_ it does.”

          Oh, how she’d love to wipe that smug look off his adorable face. “Well _fine_ , Skywalker.” Bane showed him the ring on her finger. “If you think you can _handle_ it…” she drained her glass, needing the alcohol. “Then my answer’s yes.”

 

          They took his speeder back to the Temple, to make the announcement and celebrate, and Bane noticed on the skyline that the first scaffolds for the New Sith Temple had already gone up. _Being in good with the Senate truly is a magical thing_. She felt caught between anticipation for the future and fear of it, and wished she could go back to the tribe, and stay with her mother and grandmother as long as she needed to. Everything happened so quickly in the Core, and it was always so cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was originally going to make this into a trilogy, and that might still happen, but for now, this is probably where the main story will end. I don't have a concrete idea of the plot from here, just a few elements I want to incorporate, and at the moment I'm frankly more interested in other projects. So look out for one more part to this saga in the future, in the form of its own fic (since this is already 40 chapters), but for now, this is probably the end. 
> 
> I may write other short things, and seeing TFA when it comes out may also inspire me, but until then, may the Force be with you :P


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